Eric The Blue

Twins at the end: shit the bed edition

Lots of ways to describe the Twins collapse, but to me perhaps the most vivid is suggested by this tweet from Aaron Gleeman, who covers the team for The Athletic. On May 24, the Twins beat the Tigers, 2-0, in a game at Target Field. The win lifted their record to 27-16, eleven games over .500. They lost their next two games and were never again eleven games above .500. They hung around first place into September, because divisional rivals Detroit and Kansas City were hapless, and the division's better teams, the Guardians and the White Sox, were, like the Twins, stuck around the .500 mark. These circumstances tempted some, certainly including me, to think that the Twins were possibly the best team in baseball's weakest division. But if you throw out those first 43 games, the Twins have to be grouped with the Tigers and Royals, not with the Guardians and White Sox. Here are the records of the division's 3rd- through 5th-place finishers over the season's last 119 games:

Twins     51-68
Tigers    51-68
Royals    50-69

I know, the first 43 games count too, but, from the time the weather warmed to the end of the season, the Twins were as bad as anyone in baseball's worst division.

Yes, injuries. I was watching one evening a week or two ago when, trailing by a run with the opponents batting in the bottom of the eighth inning, the Twins brought in a new pitcher, which elicited from play-by-play guy Dick Bremer the hopeful comment, "If Thielbar [or whoever it was] can work out of trouble, the Twins have due up in the ninth the middle of their order." I can't remember if the pitcher got out of the jam, but it hardly matters, because "the middle of the order" was Gio Urshela, Jake Cave, and Gary Sanchez. You can imagine the fire power lurking in the bottom of our batting order, on the off chance one of those guys reached base! Actually, Urshela had a nice year for the Twins, but he's not anything like a major league cleanup hitter. Cave and Sanchez? Nothing against them, but neither one hit .215 or had an on-base percentage of .285. By this point in the season, of course, the team on the Injured List could have beaten the team we were putting on the field, as Team Can't Play included outfielders Buxton, Larnach, and Kepler, middle infielders Polanco and Lewis, first baseman Kirilloff, catcher Jeffers, and most of our best starting pitchers: Maeda, Mahle, Paddack, Dobnak (and relievers such as Coulombe, Alcala, and Stashak). 

I don't know what to say about injuries. If you're hurt and can't play, you're hurt and can't play. See what I mean about having nothing to say? But I will say that guys sure seem to get hurt a lot! I feel guilty about enjoying professional football, as it's obvious the players are damaging themselves, but maybe I should feel similarly about baseball? Also, my dim fan's impression is that when a guy gets hurt, there is an official announcement concerning the nature of the injury and how long the player will be sidelined. Then, if it's two weeks, the two weeks pass, and then two more weeks pass, and when a month after that he still isn't playing, I've mostly forgotten the guy's on our team as there has been no updated diagnosis or prognosis that I'm aware of. It's as if The Injured List is a waiting room in another galaxy. 

I'm happy that Luis Arraez won the batting championship (though I can also imagine Aaron Judge complaining in his soul that he was deprived of the Triple Crown by a banjo hitter). The other Twin postmortems I've seen invariably name Jose Miranda as a bright spot, and who would disagree, but is rookie reliever Jhoan Duran invisible? He appeared in 57 games, pitched 67.2 innings, allowed just 14 earned runs (about one every five innings), had 8 saves, no blown saves, 18 holds, a WHIP of 0.98, and 5.6 strikeouts for each walk issued. Deserves a mention! 

Pitchers and catchers report for spring training in about four months.

Electoral data points

1. 

If I'm clicking about The Web at night and discover suddenly that it's 3 in the morning, the site I'm most likely at, if not baseball-reference.com, is this "extremely detailed map of the 2020 election." It shows the result of the last presidential election at the precinct level—that is, the vote totals reported out of every polling place (almost) in the land. It's full of curiosities, like the one pictured above, which displays the result in one of the rare precincts in Los Angeles County carried by Trump. As you can see, it's in Beverly Hills. You can make out two main roads within the precinct. The east-west one that divides the precinct into a northerly and southerly half is Sunset Boulevard. The north-south road that intersects Sunset Boulevard near the precinct's eastern edge is Rodeo Drive. If you use the above link to go to the site itself, you can zoom in to a level where those street names are labeled. I wanted to stay out far enough to suggest how anomalous the Beverly Hills result was, compared to the surrounding territory. Biden carried Los Angeles County by 71 to 28 percent. In the dark blue precincts, his advantage was no less than 85 to 15 percent. But in the Beverly Hills precinct where the head of the National Rifle Association buys his Italian suits—your dues hard at work, schmucks!—Trump won by 19 points.

I admit that highlighting the result in a single precinct (though in the context of the ones around it) is a pretty sketchy method of rebutting the frequently heard claim that Democrats are "elitist snobs" while Republicans are the party of "working people." More scientific methods might include, for example, exit poll data indicating Biden carried voters earning less than $50,000 per year by 57 to 42 percent. He also carried those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 by a nearly identical 56 to 43 percent margin. Trump, however, won voters with 6-figure incomes by 54 to 43 percent. These macro data points tend to confirm the micro one from Beverly Hills, though in my opinion the micro one is a little more eye-catching—like the shoppers along Rodeo Drive.

The exit poll data, overall, are about as interesting as the extremely detailed map. Here's just one more revealing bit, out of many. "Are you white and a born-again Christian?" Of those answering No, 62 percent voted for Biden. Of those answering Yes, 76 percent voted for Trump. It's easy to see why.

 

 

Lunching out

I usually work, without taking a lunch, till about 1 o'clock, and notwithstanding the morning oatmeal am famished when walking out of school. Luckily the most direct route home takes me past some favorite eateries that I haven't visited since pre-pandemic times. Today it was Kramarczuk's, where I had the cabbage roll pictured above, with rye bread and the side of cucumber, tomato, and onions in a vinegar dressing. If I remember right, it was about $12 for everything. Regarding the bread: delicious, but back in the day you just served yourself from the plastic bags left open by the napkins and stuff, and they'd bring out new loaves when either the rye or pumpernickel was depleted. Now if you want bread they give you three slices from the loaf they keep on their side of the cafeteria line. Probably shouldn't complain since my own habits may have played a part in the development of the new policy. 

After spending the morning around 4th- and 5th-graders and their mostly 30ish teachers, it was nice to dine surrounded by mature Slavs—maybe I'm not next in line for extinction, after all. I'm sort of curious about where they come from, however. They used to live in the neighborhood, which is now specked with high rises that are presumably home to the young professionals who may be seen walking their designer dogs while on a work break from the home office. Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s no longer possible to buy a case of High Life at Surdyk's, the neighborhood liquor store that now includes a cheese shoppe. For gazillions of my out-of-town readers, Kramarczuk's is in "lower northeast" Minneapolis, just across the Hennepin Avenue bridge from downtown. It used to be inhabited by people with names like, well, Kramarczuk, who would have had no use for local businesses such as "Base Camp Fitness."

I like how, if you click on "salads" at Kramarczuk's online menu, the first listing is for "American Potato" and the second is for "German Potato." You can have kale but you'll have to scroll. 

One day last week I lunched at Emily's Lebanese Deli, about a mile up University Avenue, almost to Broadway, where nordeast still looks like nordeast. I had some kind of a combo platter and was reminded that, though famous for liking everything, the stuffed grape leaf isn't among my all-time favorites. I'll go back, but maybe not before I've had the Bar Burger at the bar in Jax. Seventeen dollars, but what the hell, I used to get by without a part-time job. Might have a beer with it. 

Queens and princes, senators and footballers

Stunned to read that Prince Andrew didn't want Charles to be King, and even lobbied the Queen to implement a work-around. Big, if true. 

Been reading about Brett Favre, too. Maybe I should be thankful that I don't have a butt-load of money as no Republican official would ever think to tempt me with a scheme whereby a few million dollars intended for impoverished Mississippians gets “misdirected” to my accounts. Apparently Favre's defense is that he had no idea where the money came from. Plausible—but, if he's that dumb, he should run for US Senate, like Herschel Walker. In a few years, then, the three stupidest senators could be Tommy Tuberville (former head football coach at Ole Miss and Auburn), Herschel Walker (former star running back at the University of Georgia), and Brett Favre (former star quarterback at Southern Mississippi). I realize Favre isn't running for high office, but he's grifting, so it's only a matter of time.

Before disagreeing, note that I said stupidest, not vilest. The vilest is probably Ted Cruz, of Texas. I'm going through the SEC in my head, thinking of their schools and senators, an exercise that reminded me just now of Marsha Blackburn. She represents Tennessee in the US Senate and may be dumber than any of the footballers. Lincoln should just have let the South go. It would be okay if these blockheads were senators from another country. 

Among schoolchildren

I got a part-time job working around 20 hours per week, and I find that if I give up watching Twins games on TV, a sacrifice like swearing off the picking of scabs, I have as much time as before to read, sleep, walk the dog, and do my best to help with 6th- and 9th-grade math homework in the evenings. Lots of math, actually, since my gig is working as a math tutor at an elementary school in Columbia Heights, the suburb I grew up in.

First impression: lots more Spanish spoken than when I was growing up—I guess it's the first language, and the one still spoken at home, for around half the kids in the school, which is called Valley View. It's not the one I went to more than 50 years ago, but the building footprint is identical to the one I did attend less than a mile away, and the experience of being in there is the flip side to what I felt recently when stopping at an exurban Target with the same layout as the one by my house: it all seems familiar, but it's weird that everyone in the store is white.

Today at Valley View I helped a girl take a math assessment on a laptop. She's black, wore a head covering, and, though I noticed on a form that the language spoken in her home is supposedly Somali, her English was fluent and unaccented. Very fluent. Perhaps another Norwegian would call her an over-sharer, one of these kids who, every time the teacher asks a question, has her hand in the air: "Oh, oh, me, call on me!" For her math assessment, she sat with one leg crossed over the other, neither one reaching the floor and the foot of her top leg vibrating rapidly as she gave her attention to each problem. After every answer, a new problem would flash up on the screen, and I'd hear her whisper to herself, "Oh my God!" Once, when she said it with particular vehemence, I peered over her shoulder to get a look at the problem: adding not two, not three, but four numbers together, and requiring (it soon developed) a fair amount of what is now called "regrouping." 

Kids crack me up. After an elementary career spent scoffing at school, my new middle-schooler now walks with friends to the neighborhood Caribou, where they do their homework together. At least that's what they tell me they're doing. They bring their backpacks and money for smoothies, so it's either largely true or a somewhat elaborate ruse. She has called me a "school nerd" but, honestly, I did my homework alone, in my room and at the last minute, if at all. 

Confession of error

This article, "Confession of Error on My Abortion Post," by a National Review writer, seems to me like the first cousin of a Freudian slip. The author, Andrew McCarthy, had criticized Sen. Lindsey Graham's call for a federal abortion ban after 15 weeks gestational age, on the ground that it would prevent states from adopting stricter limits, including comprehensive bans with no exceptions for rape such as have already been adopted in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas. But Graham's proposed federal law would do no such thing. States that wanted comprehensive bans could still have them. The 15-week ban would apply nationally to states that, for example, wanted to retain the same access to abortion as existed under Roe. 

My take on this is that McCarthy assumed Graham, a politician, was attempting to dress the wound the Dobbs decision has inflicted on Republican prospects in the midterms. One can imagine an agreement, advertised as a compromise, whereby Republicans, in order to secure a nationwide ban after 15 weeks, would give up the extreme measures that have been enacted in a slew of red states. If Democrats voted against such a "compromise," Republicans could then ask: Who's extreme? McCarthy, however, doesn't want red states to have to live with a mere 15-week ban, even if it might be good politics.

But he was wrong about what the senator is proposing. Graham, too, is unwilling to force red states to permit abortions up to 15 weeks after fertilization. It's worth recalling, I think, that the winning argument at the Supreme Court was that the Constitution is silent on abortion and that states therefore should be able to do as they see fit regarding abortion policy. People like McCarthy and Graham celebrated the decision, but its logic was so "summer of '22." Now it's been a few weeks, football season has begun, and it develops that only states with legislatures and governors who agree with Graham and McCarthy should be left alone to do as they see fit. Graham, especially, wants the Big Bad Federal Government to enact a national law telling Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island, Illinois, Minnesota, California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and others that what they'd like to do, which is what they have been doing for years, is now going to be illegal. "Federalism if you agree with me; a national ban for all who don't."

It's sort of comical to see one nut having to apologize for assuming, falsely, that another nut feels constrained by logic, coherence, consistency, and an election-year wish to appear "reasonable."  

Kids go to “school,” education does not occur

We senior citizens like to think of ourselves as old hands who've seen it all, but twice a week I'm shocked by something, and one of the two for this week is going to be this article, in The New York Times, about private Jewish religious schools in New York. It begins:

The Hasidic Jewish community has long operated one of New York's largest private schools on its own terms, resisting any outside scrutiny of how its students are faring. 

But in 2019 the school, the Central United Talmudical Academy, agreed to give state standardized tests in reading and math to more than 1,000 students. 

Every one of them failed.

And continues:

The leaders of New York's Hasidic community have built scores of private schools to educate children in Jewish law, prayer and tradition—and to wall them off from the secular world. Offering little English and math, and virtually no science or history, they drill students relentlessly, sometimes brutally, during hours of religious lessons conducted in Yiddish. 

The result, a New York Times investigation has found, is that generations of children have been systematically denied a basic education, trapping many of them in a cycle of joblessness and dependency. . . .

The schools appear to be operating in violation of state laws that guaranty children an adequate education. Even so, the Times found, the Hasidic boys' schools have found ways of tapping into enormous sums of government money, collecting more than $1 billion in the past four years alone.

Maybe I’m shocked only because I’ve had a possibly exalted view of the intellectual acumen of Jews ever since I learned Albert Einstein was Jewish in the same week I heard Archie Bunker tell Edith that he didn’t want a Jewish doctor “unless I’m really sick.” Years ago I saw a movie, "Jesus Camp," about young kids sunk in the religious zealotry of the adults in their lives, and was nudged toward the view that Christian fundamentalism is child abuse. Now I’m thinking the phenomenon is ecumenical. It's outrageous that government supports with tax dollars religious schools that aren't teaching kids any math or science or literature (besides the Bible) while the politicians most eager to give them money are complaining about test scores at public schools and purging the libraries of books fundamentalists don't want to read. You can disagree with me, but I don´t want to hear from you till you’ve solved a problem from my 9th-grade public school kid’s math homework tonight:

Write an equation for the parabola that cuts the x-axis at 3, passes through (5, 12), and has an axis of symmetry at x = 2.

Apparently the children of Hasidim would benefit from being subjected to a standard form of adolescent torture that their elders, though plenty cruel, are in no position even to imagine.

Kids follow the news

I remember sometimes getting annoyed at people who would regale me with stories about their charming children. It's not necessarily your turn now, because there's still time to click the back button.

I have a 6th-grader and a 9th-grader, both girls. On Thursdays, the 6th-grader has a piano lesson at 6:30. I don't like trying to fit supper into the window before music, and even less do I enjoy thinking about what to make for supper while driving home from the lesson after 7:00. So it occurred that last night about 7:30 we were taking our usual Thursday night seats at the Lowbrow when the 9th-grader's phone dinged. Because she's socially ambitious and admires all her sister's friends, the 6th-grader immediately demanded to know who the text was from. Without looking up from her phone, the 9th-grader adopted a practiced tone of jaded indifference and answered:

"What if I tell you who it isn't from? It isn't from the Queen of England."

On the road

I guess the state of New Jersey is attempting to edify motorists by posting signs like this at rest stops along the Garden State Turnpike.

Since a liberal arts education is worthless but for the rare occasion it allows you to shake your damn head while contemplating the work product of people who’ve landed an 8-5 office job, I'm not going to suppress the urge to note that the sign's claim is dubious for several reasons, including:

1. Aristotle was born after Socrates died, which would have made it hard for the two of them to speak over one another, on arête or anything else; and
2. Socrates, the first of the three to be born, was executed in 399 BC, so the date of the fake quote is off by a couple thousand years. 

It'll all be forgiven if the rest rooms are clean.

'Twas the night before

It's the night before the first day of school—potentially fraught and maybe more than usual at our house as younger daughter is starting middle school tomorrow and older one is starting high school. Right now they are fighting about who will shower first, because the one who goes second has to wipe it down. I don't think this issue has arisen before. In the past, the argument has always ended with someone saying, "Ok, I just won't take one then." The response to that has sometimes been, "Ok, I won't either." You know it's a big night when strength of inclination to shower tops the aversion factor associated with performing a 3-minute chore. The old tactic has been retired and the fight has moved to new ground. 

I have to say that the coping mechanisms employed to mitigate stress are kind of charming. The older one told me today that she and her friend discovered that they have their first- and second-hour classes together. "So," she explained, beaming, "if we get lost going from English to Science, we'll be tardy together, and it will be a lot less awkward." Younger one almost always adopts an attitude of aloof indifference when being lectured by older sister, but this evening, at supper, she listened attentively to every bit of advice that a recent grad could offer. Any port in a storm. 

I have to do laundry. Final decisions haven't been made and all options must be available.

UPDATE: As I was saying good night to them, the high schooler got a text from an old elementary school friend. They've lost touch with each other to a degree: the friend was home schooled after having a difficult transition to middle school, so for a few years has been removed somewhat from the social mix. But now she's going back to high school. Her text, which came in about 11:15, said: "Want to eat lunch with me tomorrow?" Apparently "orientation night" was a disorganized disaster but here's hoping that in around twelve hours these two can find the lunchroom and each other. 

#tardytogether
#bekind

Twins in August

The Twins in August were a .500 club, 14 wins and 14 losses. You might think that a team in contention for a divisional title would go backwards with a record like that over 28 games, but the Twins place in the Central Division standings did not change: they were a game behind the division leading Cleveland Guardians on August 1, and they were a game behind them on September 1, too. A local sportswriter, taking note of this fact, set out yesterday the records of the contending teams over the last 65 games:

Guardians  32-33
White Sox  32-33
Twins         31-34

Well, that's what it's been like all year. Here are the same teams over the course of the whole season, a couple days into September:

Guardians    68-62
Twins           67-64
White Sox    67-66

I was watching the Twins one evening in the middle of August when TV color guy Justin Morneau declared, "One of these teams is going to get hot and win the division." It's true that one of them is going to win the division. I have no idea why he thinks one of the teams is sure to "get hot." Over five months none has. Seems more likely to me that the sixth month will be like the other five. My candidate for color commentary is, "One of these teams is going to win the division by going 17-14 over a thrilling stretch drive." (It's your job to hype interest with expressions like "thrilling stretch drive.")

The Twins' problems aren't obscure. With Buxton and Polanco not playing, the bottom of their batting order is anemic. For the last couple nights, it's been Cave, Sanchez, Celestino. I love pulling for all three, as I have personal reasons for identifying with players who struggle, but facts are facts, and these guys' OPSs are, respectively, .674, .677, and .635. Since Sanchez is our regular catcher, and catchers aren't really expected to hit, let's swap him out for Kepler: day after day, then, we have in our outfield, at the start of "the stretch drive," Celestino (.635) between Cave (.674) and Kepler (.680). To help you get your bearings, the overall OPS in the major leagues so far this year is .707, and outfielders are expected to hit.

Then there is our pitching. After a good April and May, it's been a weakness, and the team was praised for adding three proven pitchers at the August 2 trade deadline. But the trio's results in Twin uniforms—maybe the word is "mixed." Jorge Lopez, for whom expectations were perhaps highest, has four saves but also a loss and two blown saves in 12 games as a Twin. Tyler Mahle got roughed up in Chicago tonight, his first start after being removed from an August game with a sore shoulder and diminished fast ball. Michael Fullmer has been good, not great, which is to say: he's added needed depth. I'm pretty sure we weren't expecting to have half our August games started by either Chris Archer, Dylan Bundy, or Aaron Sanchez, and it's fortunate that all three are doing about as well as could be reasonably hoped. We were 6-8 in their starts, 8-6 in games started by Joe Ryan, Sonny Gray, or Mahle. 

If the Twins weren't in contention, I'd still turn on the TV about 1.5 hours after starting time in hopes of seeing Jhoan Duran pitch. Omg, wtf, etc.! In the last week of August, he pitched in three games, one inning each time, nine up and nine down on four strikeouts and some weak grounders. For the year, his ERA is sub-2 and his WHIP barely registers. He has 11.5 strikeouts and two walks per nine innings pitched. These numbers, however, aren't as telling as the way opposing hitters will take a Duran pitch, then step out of the batter's box to share a laugh with the catcher and umpire. Apparently 102 mph with late diving action is detectable in person, too.  To have a chance, I think you'd have to be able to swing an ironing board. 

College boy

Have been recalling lately how I paid for college. Items in the news, you know. Basically, my parents bankrolled my college education. I recall having a campus job washing dishes in the cafeteria a couple times per month. That was good for a trivial amount of pocket money. I also took out a loan for the relatively small portion of the big bill my parents didn't cover. I think maybe they thought it was important I have "skin in the game." Anyway, it was the kind of loan where you get the money, and you don't start paying it back till you're done with school and working. Then, you pay like on a mortgage, and interest accrues on the unpaid principle. When that day came, my dad gave me the money to pay off the loan, and he stepped into the shoes of my creditor—nice for me, as his interest rate was zero. Even nicer: after I'd been paying him awhile, he told me one day to forget about it, which until now I mostly did. 

My parents weren't rich—middle class tending toward affluent, at best. I think they were able to save a tidy sum for my college (and my sister's) because, one, they placed a high value on education—just as something good in itself, without reference to any goal of "getting ahead"—and, two, by inclination and upbringing they preferred to live modestly. Also, college didn't cost as much in the 1970s. I think I remember that in my sophomore year the cost of tuition, room and board at my college was $4050. The year before it had been under $4000, and it never reached $5000 while I was there. Today, it's $63,110. 

Probably you can see where I'm going with this. All things considered, I probably shouldn't be the one to bitch my guts out about the federal government forgiving $10,000 of student loan debt for people who lacked the advantages described above. It's true that loan forgiveness does not address the underlying problem of high college costs. But I wonder whether this argument doesn't turn against the people making it. Especially at public colleges and universities, a leading factor in rising costs is that they are not funded as generously by taxpayers as they were 40 years ago. The schools therefore cut programs and pass along costs to students, who take out loans and fall into debt at 20. The people who complain bitterly about loan forgiveness are the same ones vehemently opposed to what they regard as "lavish spending" on higher education. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that what they're actually against is people of modest means attaining a college education.

Unless, of course, they're good at sportzing. No one complains about taxpayers footing the college bill for good sportzers. You can read here about how the government allows affluent people to save for college while simultaneously reducing their tax bill. No one seems bitter about that, either.

 

Biden owes Americans an explanation on why a truck driver who didn't go to college is now responsible for the student loans of a rich lawyer.

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) August 24, 2022

And it does not tend to diminish my support for a policy initiative when I notice that those in opposition, including US senators, have no better tactic than to lie about it. Since "rich lawyers" earn more than $125k/year, they are barred from having their loans forgiven under the plan. 

Dressing up

 

Family wedding tomorrow. Daughters have been planning for weeks what to wear. Today they asked, I thought a little worriedly, if I knew what I was wearing, so I looked in the closet, put something on, and modeled it for them. They studied me impassively. I think the younger one thought the verdict could go either way, because I saw her look at the older one, as if willing to take a cue. Older one finally pronounced me "okay," at which time younger one elaborated, "Passable, barely."

It's good I passed inspection because it seems my options on these occasions are limited: I found in the pocket of the blue blazer I had on the church bulletin for the funeral service of a friend's mom. It's dated June 18, 2021. I'm thinking that if I can maintain roughly the same weight, at the rate of one use per year this blue blazer should get me to the finish line. 

Scott Shapiro tweets

 

I want to plug my favorite tweeter, law professor Scott Shapiro, who, as revelations connected to Trump's casual home storage of classified documents became more stupefying, tweeted:

As a young boy, I was at a creepy circus when an old witch hobbled over to me and whispered in my ear: "Donald Trump is not entirely trustworthy."

I see now that was just yesterday, when he was on fire. For example:

A real shame that the FBI never raided Hillary Clinton's home for her emails, because Republicans would have been forced by their own principles to defend Hillary.

I've seen enough: I'm ready to call the 2020 race for Joe Biden.

Interesting thought experiment: what if a Democrat had sensitive government information in her basement?

A couple days ago, he tweeted:

Programming announcement: I'm officially undecided about DeSantis. I will be doing my own research on the Florida governor and presenting my findings on here. More to come.

A few hours later:

I think I found an instance of Ron DeSantis acting hypocritically. Checking my analysis, but this could be big. 

Between those two, demonstrating his versatility:

The great economic innovation of NFTs is getting people to pay you for absolutely nothing in return.

A smattering from the past week or two:

It's unreasonable to demand coup leaders keep records secure during active rebellion.

When I was 10 years old, I was at the circus on a school trip. An old witch hobbled up to me and whispered in my ear: "The future is so bleak that Dick and Liz Cheney will be the voices of Reason."

Coup leaders warn of a second coup if DOJ prosecutes them for their first coup.

Finding it hard to believe that Trump would be careless or worse on matters of national security.

Trump had a standing order to repeal every law he broke.

I am losing faith in the Republican party to act responsibly.

He ruthlessly mocks "the Supreme Court of the Republican party" in an ongoing series of tweets along the line of, "SCOTUS rules 6-3 that Ted Cruz's wife actually is ugly." "Set to hear oral arguments on whether his dad killed Kennedy." "Cruz submits amicus brief arguing Trump is right, his dad really did it." I'm just making those up, in order to inject some semi-original content here, but you get the idea. Here's a real one:

Supreme Court rules 6-3 that Diabetes isn't a real disease because the word does not appear in the Constitution.

Shapiro tweeted out the above meme on the day Trump took the Fifth a couple hundred times in a deposition related to the New York attorney general's investigation of the Trump Organization's allegedly corrupt and unlawful business practices. Though unburdened by a legal education, I wonder whether there isn't a natural conclusion to be drawn—namely, that by answering truthfully Trump would declare his own guilt.

Anyhow, Shapiro has around 80k followers, which is probably not as many as would enjoy his tweet-sized commentary. 

Reading in bed

Someone has said of Dr. Johnson's trademark ponderous style that no imitator had ever failed to make himself ridiculous. The only possible response is that neither did Johnson always avoid making himself ridiculous. Last night, reading along in bed "The Life of Richard Savage," I came to the following passage:

Lord Tyrconnel affirmed that it was the constant practice of Mr. Savage to enter a tavern with any company that proposed it, drink the most expensive wines with great profusion, and when the reckoning was demanded, to be without money: if, as it often happened, his company were willing to defray his part, the affair ended, without any ill consequences; but if they were refractory, and expected that the wine should be paid for by him that drank it, his method of composition was, to take them with him to his own apartment, assume the government of the house, and order the butler in an imperious manner to set the best wine in the cellar before his company, who often drank till they forgot the respect due to the house in which they were entertained, indulged themselves in the utmost extravagance of merriment, practised the most licentious frolics, and committed all the outrages of drunkenness.

I feel somewhat confident that this is unintentionally funny. Something about the use of polysyllabic diction and odd elevated phrases to narrate "low" tavern behavior makes it so, and Exhibit A of the laughable effect might be the way in which the one crystalline string of words—"expected that the wine should be paid for by him that drank it"—is scrunched between "refractory" to describe pissed, stiffed drinking companions and "method of composition" to describe Savage's remedy when things got tense. By the way, regarding that remedy, it's a bit of a challenge to see through the draperies, but "assumed the government of the house" indicates that Savage plied his companions with his landlord's wine, not his own. Licentious frolics ensued and the trouble that began at the tavern was forgotten. 

Just a few pages later, however, one comes to one of those passages that make me love Dr. Johnson. (He'd probably substitute "reverence" as a verb for "love.")

That Mr. Savage was too much elevated by any good fortune is generally known; and some passages of his Introduction to The Author to be Let sufficiently show that he did not wholly refrain from such satire as he afterwards thought very unjust when he was exposed to it himself; for, when he was afterwards ridiculed in the character of a distressed poet, he very easily discovered that distress was not a proper subject for merriment, or topic of invective. He was then able to discern that if misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced. And the humanity of that man can deserve no panegyric who is capable of reproaching a criminal in the hands of the executioner.

On the other side of the gen gap

More and more, I have that experience of speaking earnestly, or with enthusiasm, to my kids about something and then watching as the curtain draws slowly shut across their face. For example, I was explaining recently about the concept of a "record album," a collection of songs recorded for play in a certain order that people used to listen to over and over again, with the result that to this day, if I hear "Thunder Road" somewhere, soon as it's over I hear in my head the first notes of "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" and am genuinely startled when the next sound is anything else. Bizarre-o! 

I assure them that I am familiar with the concept of a "playlist," but do not partake as it prevents you from being exposed to new things, with the result that you sink into fuddyduddism. It is highly amusing to them that I should declare myself "open" to "new things" on the same day that I complain about young teen fashion. Have they noticed that with "new" jeans you pay a lot extra for big rips across the thigh?

They wouldn't be interested, but the other day I listened to the Emmylou Harris station on Pandora while pedaling my stationary bike in the basement. Within about 45 minutes, I heard all the following, all great (or at least enjoyable), and all I believe unknown to me five years ago.

• Emmylou Harris, "Red Dirt Girl"
• Emmylou Harris and John Prine, "Angel from Montgomery"
• Alison Krauss, "When You Say Nothing At All"
• Emmylou Harris (with Willie Nelson), "Gulf Coast Highway"
• John Prine and Nanci Griffith, "Speed of the Sound of Loneliness"
• Emmylou Harris, covering Townes Van Zandt's "If I Needed You" 
• Merle Haggard, "Mama Tried" 

If I made them listen to any of these, they'd laugh me into the 2020's. 

 

The Geek surveys many scenes

"Gleeman and The Geek" is a podcast for fans of the Minnesota Twins. Gleeman refers to Aaron Gleeman, who covers the Twins for The Athletic. His podcast sidekick, "The Geek," is John Bonnes, the proprietor of Twins Daily, an online news site for all things Twins. I have a friend whose knowledge of the Twins' farm system calls to mind the adjective "encyclopedic." He's also fond of informing me, for instance, that Luis Arraez is batting .260 against left-handed pitchers (.360 against righties) and that the opposing team's batting average against Sonny Gray on his third trip through their batting order is .320. I used to think the devotion to Twins Studies exhibited by such esoteric knowledge must exceed that of fundamentalists for the Bible, but, having now driven to Wichita with him by way of a Des Moines stopover, I realize that his secret is listening to "Gleeman and The Geek" in the car and perusing Twins Daily on his iPad while ingesting the morning dose of caffeine. If he can store for recall one morsel per session, a conservative estimate, it's still more than enough to amaze a more casual fan.

On the podcast, which is both smart and funny, Gleeman comes off as the bigger geek while Bonnes supplies the laugh track. I come to discover, however, that Bonnes is a nerdish number grinder as well, and not only on the topic of baseball. Both guys live in downtown Minneapolis, and Bonnes, judging by his social media posts, is highly annoyed with the Grand Old Party's narrative concerning a crime wave that's made our city center not just unlivable but dangerous for the courageous suburban sojourner who wants to go to Target Field and maybe enjoy a late meal with a few drinks after the game. His retort is a series of posts called Today's Dangerous #DowntownDawdle, which consists mostly of selfies of him and his wife enjoying themselves in crowded downtown establishments. He always calls out the business name, and usually in the background you can see a plated sample from the menu and a few dead soldiers—neither he nor the Mrs. appear to be teetotalers. The subtext is plainly, "Another fun night without getting shot!" He's also a pretty good photographer: a recent variation was a picture of the just risen sun glistening off the sides of Minneapolis's glassy skyscrapers—it concluded with a thank-you to his dog, whose weak bladder I guess accounted for him being outside with his phone at that hour. 

Since The Geek has a lot of followers, it was just a matter of time before some people started replying with links to news stories about our mean streets. What about the lead on KARE 11 last night? Your head's in the sand! Get real about crime data! Sure, it's great for you in the prosperous North Loop, but what about the less privileged? (Everyone knows Republicans care deeply about the less privileged.) Bonnes's response was an exercise in social sabermetrics: he applied Minneapolis crime statistics to demographic data and roughed out the probability of being assaulted in downtown Minneapolis. Executive summary: if you dare drive east into downtown on 394 from, say, Wayzata, you might as well go to the game/concert/play/saloon/restaurant/show because, once out of your car, by far the most dangerous part of the evening is over. He notes that his calculation overstates your peril considerably if you are not the kind of person to get into drunken arguments with strangers in bars. 

I see that Dr. Scott Jensen, the GOP candidate for governor, has interviewed some 70ish ladies from outstate Minnesota somewhere who say they are too scared to come to Minneapolis anymore. Well, yeah, of course they're scared: they've been listening to you, not geeky John Bonnes! Anyway, what is the Republican solution to the problem candidates like Jensen are loudly diagnosing? Their brief is a lie, inasmuch as the point seems to be that violent crime is a problem mainly in big cities in blue states with Democratic mayors and governors. Of the ten states with the highest murder rates in 2020 (the last year for which comprehensive data is available), eight have voted for the Republican presidential candidate in every election this century. Murder rates in Trump states were 40% higher than in states carried by Biden. The five states with the highest murder rates are, in order, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, and Missouri. Of the hundred biggest cities in America, only two are in these five states, but all five have a Republican governor and a Republican majority in their state legislature—not just for the last year or two, either. You can look these things up. It's as if the failing students were shouting advice about how the others should study. 

ADDENDUM

Tonight’s “Dangerous” #DowntownDawdle :
• #MNTwins win, duh.
• Nur-D album 💿
release party at First Ave
• midnight drinks 🍺 on O’Donovan’s patio
• a 2:30 AM walk (stumble?) thru downtown’s mean streets.
• Our status: yet again, still alive. 👫😉 pic.twitter.com/wTkjFcyE0W

— John Bonnes (@TwinsGeek) August 20, 2022

Arrested development?

She makes me laugh so hard. She’s a kindergarten teacher who makes videos talking to politicians the way she does her kindergartners. pic.twitter.com/INCNXoEEvu

— StaceyC.inKS (@StaceyCKs1) August 14, 2022

Since it's baseball season, I may not be up to speed, but it seems Trump's account of what's going on with federal government documents kept illegally at Mar-a-Lago has progressed from "Returned them all" to "They weren't classified" to "FBI planted classified documents in my beautiful home" to "I declassified them by deciding in my mind that they weren't classified anymore" to "But Hillary/Obama!" Lots of people are pointing out that Tuesday's lies are refuted by the new ones he tells on Wednesday (since, for example, he could not have declassified documents planted by the FBI), and that he can't himself declassify documents, though it hardly matters anyway, as the crimes he could be charged with don't require the documents to be classified. So as usual he's flooding the zone with fecal matter, and friend and foe alike are performing taxonomic labors upon his effluvia. But it seems to me the more pertinent questions are:

Why did you have these documents in your home?

Why didn't you give them back? 

What did you plan on doing with them?

It could well be that the darkest suspicions of some of his foes aren't justified. For instance, his motive might just be part of the everlasting vanity project: he wanted to show cool stuff to people he'd like to impress. The theory here would be, basically, that the guy who was president for four years has the sensibility of an adolescent male bragging to peers about having copped a feel in the back row of the theater. The wide-eyed attention of fatuous admirers is the grail. The tik-tok artist above thinks he stalled out long before adolescence. Who knows? I'm not a shrink, but it's obvious he's a mess. 

The Internet: pros and cons

In 2002, the Internet Age still in its infancy, the philosopher Bernard Williams (pictured) wrote:

Moreover, the Internet shows signs of creating for the first time what Marshall McLuhan prophesied as a consequence of television, a global village, something that has the disadvantages both of globalization and of a village. Certainly it does offer some reliable sources of information for those who want it and know what they are looking for, but equally it supports that mainstay of all villages, gossip. It constructs proliferating meeting places for the free and unstructured exchange of messages which bear a variety of claims, fancies, and suspicions, entertaining, superstitious, scandalous, or malign. The chances that many of these messages will be true are low, and the probability that the system itself will help anyone pick out the true ones is even lower. In this respect, post-modern technology may have returned dialectically to a transmuted version of the pre-modern world, and the chances of acquiring true beliefs by these means, except for those who already have knowledge to guide them, will be much like those in the Middle Ages. At the same time, the global nature of these conversations makes the situation worse than in a village, where at least you might encounter and perhaps be forced to listen to some people who had different opinions and obsessions. As critics concerned for the future of democratic discussion have pointed out, the Internet makes it easy for large numbers of previously isolated extremists to find each other and talk only among themselves. 

Whew. Williams was dying of cancer when he wrote this, in his book Truth and Truthfulness, and so did not live to have his prescience confirmed.

However, counterpoint. Without the Internet, you couldn't sit at home and experience intense enjoyment from, for example:

 

The lyric in the line that seems overcrowded with syllables is, "Try to hide my sorrow from the people I meet." In some versions, this is amended to "Sing my song for the people I meet," which scans better, but I like the first way: more in line with what the song seems to be about—someone at the end of the line, given up, but then has caught a hope and is trying to edge back toward life. 

What they're shouting

In this post, wingnut blogger John Hinderaker helpfully informs us that Minnesota governor Tim Walz is unpopular in rural Minnesota. The reasons include that he seems "angry" and dresses "slovenly," which I guess is annoying to farmers, who surely must have noticed, as John did, that in their FarmFest debate Walz's GOP challenger Scott Jensen was attired in a comparatively "respectable" manner. John posts pictures to prove it.

Whatevs. 

Our first congressional district is the heart of Minnesota's farm belt and the host of FarmFest. The district's entire southern border is the Iowa line. The US House seat there has been vacant since the Republican incumbent died last winter. A few days after John posted his sartorial comparisons, there was an election to fill the vacancy, and the Republican candidate defeated the Democrat by 4 points. Two years ago, Trump carried the district by 10 points—and lost the state 52.6% to 45.4%. Maybe the former president isn't a sharp enough dresser! Maybe Walz's rural problem isn't as big as Jensen's Twin Cities problem! I'm just spit-balling, obviously. 

On the subject of anger, John should read his own blog. His co-author Scott Johnson heaps vitriol upon the Walz administration's COVID response, here. Nursing home residents died because of forced social isolation! Constant harping on danger! Destroyed the lives of school children! Walz policies caused sharp increases in deaths attributed to drug and alcohol use! Wrecked the economy! Suppressed data! 

The last charge, regarding the suppression of data, is notable in an article that is itself free of any supporting evidence. It seems there should be statistics showing, for example, that drug and alcohol deaths spiked, but if there are Mr. Johnson and his mouthpiece, Kevin Roche, aren't sharing. Here are some numbers relating to the arguably crucial metric of keeping people alive—COVID deaths per million population in Minnesota, its bordering states, and one other state with a governor adored by the Power Line bloggers (source is Worldometer):

Minnesota (2369)
Wisconsin (2571)
North Dakota (3052)
Iowa (3122)
South Dakota (3361)
Florida (3652)

The closest thing to a data point in the diatribe concerns "hundreds of thousands" of lost jobs brought on by "lockdowns." It's true that around 3 million Minnesotans were working in late 2019, and that employment in the state fell to about 2.6 million in the spring of 2020. Over the same time frame, South Dakota lost 42,000 jobs and Florida lost 1.2 million. Maybe a killer pandemic isn't good for business, anywhere, and "lockdown" is just a vocab word favored by hyperventilators. More spit-balling.

If only a curled lip and loud, hectoring tone could take the place of an argument. 

Twins: looking back and forward

The Twins haven't fared very well this season in games against baseball's elite teams. They just finished their season series against the Dodgers: four games, four losses, by scores of 7-2, 7-0, 10-3, and 8-5. They're 0-3 against the Astros. The scores of those games were 5-0, 11-3, and 5-0. Against the Yankees, slightly better: in a 3-game series at Target Field in June, the Twins won a game (and for what it's worth, not much, outscored the Yankees in the series). They have a 4-game series in The Bronx in early September and a 3-game series in Houston later this month.

In games against other American League teams likely to make the playoffs, the Twins have done pretty well: they won the season series against both Toronto (4 games to 3) and Tampa Bay (4 games to 2). If the season ended today, the Twins would finish out of the playoffs, a game behind the Guardians in the Central Division and a game behind the Orioles for the last wild card spot. We're 5-6 against the Guardians and 4-3 against the Orioles.

Perhaps the fairest conclusion to be drawn is that the Twins, while certainly not a great team, are good enough to be competitive against other merely good ones. If they can stay in contention through the end of this month, the start of September should be fun: a road trip to Chicago (the White Sox currently trail us in the Central Division by 1.5 games) and then on to New York for the series against the Yankees. After that trip, eight of their next eleven games are against the Guardians. 

Fine for fans to look ahead. I don't know if the Twins are changing hotels, but their next three games are also in Los Angeles, against the Angels. Tyler Mahle, one of three good pitchers acquired before the trading deadline, will be on the mound for game 1 tomorrow. We've lost three games in a row, not for the first time this season, but we've yet to lose four in a row. If the first half of September is to be interesting, better start winning the next game.  

Breaking news: criminal upset with law enforcement methods

I take it that the Trump base is riled up by the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago, but I'm thinking maybe it's connected in some way to the property owner having live tweeted his criming.

"If they can do it to a former president," it's said, "imagine what they can do to you!" But if Trump is innocent, he has nothing to fear, and should happily comply with the requests of law enforcement officials. I think that's the advice they give Black people. It's hard to keep up. The author of this article lambasts the FBI, then says he'd like to see the Mar-a-Lago warrant before saying more, then says the FBI should be "disestablished." I believe that's what Ilhan Omar says about the Minneapolis Police Department. The political spectrum really is a circle, not a line. 

Pretty sure that the owner of the property that's searched gets a copy of the warrant, as well as a list of items seized. Maybe, if Trump thinks these documents show the FBI has nothing on him, he'd disseminate them instead of just running his mouth. 

Rules, rules

Rocco Baldelli started by describing the overturned call as “chickenshit” and got even more heated from there.pic.twitter.com/wrY2Yt4wE1

— Aaron Gleeman (@AaronGleeman) August 7, 2022

Baldelli holding little back in his post-game presser today. Contrary to his suggestion, however, the same call was made just a couple days ago in a game between the Rockies and Padres. Here's a video of that play. The clip includes a primer on the rule itself, which is 6.01(i)(2). There is addended to the rule the following "comment" that persuades me the Twins and Rockies both got screwed:

A catcher shall not be deemed to have violated Rule 6.01(i)(2) unless he has both blocked the plate without possessing the ball . . . and also hindered or impeded the progress of the runner attempting to score. 

Video of the play in today's Twins game is here, together with the real-time commentary of Dick Bremer and Glen Perkins. Twin managers have in my memory gone more woo-loo than Baldelli did today. I remember once Gene Mauch, having returned to the dugout after being ejected, started flinging bats onto the field at Fenway Park: video of that incident, here. Of course, Mauch had the enemy in front of him, whereas Baldelli's nemesis was some anonymous replay guy in New York City. 

An unorthodox but somewhat plausible take on the loss today would be that the Blue Jays won because the baserunner they were granted in the top of the tenth did a better job than the one the Twins were granted in the bottom of the inning. The guy who scored the winning run for the Jays had alertly tagged and advanced to third on a fly to medium-deep center. Buxton made a strong throw, and the Twins challenged the safe call, but the runner made it. When the next batter hit another fly ball, he scored what proved to be the winning, if disputed, run. Max Kepler was our runner, and when the first batter, Jose Miranda, lifted a ball to fairly deep center, he failed to tag and advance. Two outs later, the game ended with him on third base. 

Which reminds me that I'm a little puzzled by why Kepler doesn't seem to be the object of fan criticism to the degree that, say, Miguel Sano has been. Today Kepler was 0-for-4 and, despite never earning his way on base, still made a baserunning blunder in the tenth inning that may have cost us the game. For the season, he's batting .236 with 9 homers, 39 RBI, and an OPS of .714. Last year, he hit .211 with 19 homers, 54 RBI, and an OPS of .719. He's our everyday, 29-year-old right fielder. 

It's hard to play baseball at the big-league level, but Kepler has also shown that he'd rather miss three games in Toronto than be vaccinated against COVID—and getting vaccinated is easy.

Table talk

What It’s Like to Vacation With Me:

husband: want to try bungee jumping? They have a catapult we could both go in? Or luge? Skiing?

me: did you know there’s a LIBRARY in Queenstown?

— Agnes Callard (@AgnesCallard) August 3, 2022

I've found my soul mate, but it appears she's married to one of these ambitious adventurer types. "Life is short, therefore I will leap from high places and ski down the sides of sheer cliffs!"

Just had the following breakfast table conversation with older daughter.

Her: Whatcha reading?

Me: An article arguing that, to date, the results of the primary elections show Trump still has an iron grip on the Republican party.

Her: You are such a nerd.

Me: Nerds rule, cool kids drool.

Her: Only a nerd would say that.

Me: Perhaps if you were a nerd, you'd comprehend that I have already copped to being one, and as a consequence do not regard it as an insult to be accused in this manner.

Her: [Stands up from table, walks away snickering.]

Parlor game

When I heard that Trump's ex Ivana, mother of Ivanka and Eric and Don Jr., had been buried in a corner of his Bedminster golf course, in New Jersey, I thought in my innocence that maybe she'd loved golf. I think it might be appropriate for my ashes to be distributed along the eternal scrappy rough of the 566-yard 12th hole of Gross Golf Course—they've cut down the strand of pines just to the left of the green on #3, so that's no longer an option.

It's more likely, however, that Ivana Trump cares nothing for golf and is being exploited in death by her statesman ex. Brooke Harrington, who researches tax avoidance schemes of the wealthy, points out that the law in New Jersey confers substantial tax advantages upon "cemetery companies." The definition of a "cemetery company" is "any individual, corporation, partnership, association, or other public or private entity which owns, operates, controls, or manages land or places used or dedicated for use for burial of human remains or disposition of cremated human remains." I would hope that the law included some limiting provision related to land used for more than one purpose, though I don't see that it does. In any event, we should all know by now that Trump is not averse to pursuing legally dubious strategies, or just outright illegal ones, if they advance his interests.

There has to be some reason that Ivana's remains are buried on her ex's golf course. That it was her wish might be the unlikeliest. Sad!

But no one's talking about Ivana's resting place now that Trump endorsed "ERIC" in the Republican primary for US Senate in Missouri. The problem with this is that there were three Erics in the race, two of whom were among the leading contenders, and Trump did not trouble himself with last names. Both Erics immediately claimed to have been endorsed by Trump. When journalists made inquiries, a Trump spokesperson said the endorsement "speaks for itself." I guess I agree with that. 

The way in which each new bit of Trump lunacy tends to supplant the one before suggests a parlor game for us "haters": identifying a forgotten shard of Trumpean stupidity that elicits envious "Oh yeahs!" from the other contestants. You would not want to waste a turn on, for example, Trump's view that ingesting bleach might combat "the Wuhan virus"—that one's insufficiently obscure to be a crowd pleaser, I'm afraid. My go-to would probably be his proposal to augment the wall on our southern border with a moat to be well stocked with either snakes or alligators.  Apparently White House staffers were placing calls to engineers, zoologists—experts from various fields who presumably could advise regarding the project's cost and plausibility. Imagine being an actual expert and taking one of those calls.  

American stories: Ring Lardner's "The Golden Honeymoon"

By way of preface, a few lines concerning the "critical consensus" regarding Ring Lardner (1885-1933). According to his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lardner wasted his talent writing about baseball, "[a] boy's game, with no more possibilities in it than a boy could master, a game bounded by walls which kept out novelty or danger, change or adventure." John Berryman thought this was mostly wrong: Lardner was not primarily a "baseball writer" and, even if he had been, there's nothing inherently unserious about that. Berryman:

Yogi Berra is a boy? Lardner wrote about big leaguers largely: not boys, men, in danger every second of demotion to the minors, or focuses of national attention. They were nowhere, and they will be nowhere. Here they are, in continuous crisis, dramatized in the key plays Lardner describes so well. Now take a man who had always a dim view of life: this precariousness makes a good subject . . .

Berryman, however, expands on Fitzgerald's suggestion concerning a lack of seriousness by arguing that almost all Lardner's best-known works exhibit carelessness and a lack of anything like artistic purpose. Of "The Love Nest," for example, he says the story could only have been written in order to get a big check from The Saturday Evening Post and that whatever appeal it has is connected to the cheap thrill of a journalistic exposure. You think Hollywood big shots have happy marriages? Think again! (Berryman doesn't mention that almost no one who's able to read thinks that Hollywood big shots are known for their happy marriages.) Elizabeth Hardwick amplifies when she puzzles over "the element of self-destroying indifference" in the prefaces Lardner wrote to his story collections—collections, she says, that include a few great stories, which she enumerates: "My Roomy," "Champion," "Some Like Them Cold," "The Golden Honeymoon," "Haircut," and "Zone of Quiet." It would have been amusing, and a blow to the notion that there's a critical consensus on Lardner, if she'd included "The Love Nest."

"The Golden Honeymoon" is about the fiftieth anniversary wedding trip of a New Jersey couple to the Tampa-St. Pete area. The story is told in the voice, including the grammar and spelling and malapropisms, of the husband. This is a device Lardner, in one form or another, used over and over again. Some of his fictions are the diaries of the leading character; others, the principal's personal letters; here, the husband, back home in New Jersey, is setting down his semi-literate account of his Florida trip. In Huck Finn, the boy's natural, unliterary voice registers the truth about every situation he encounters. In Lardner, it's one more way in which the author registers disapproval. By their language you will know them to be rubes. I think I've noticed that the word "cringy" is these days enjoying an elevated currency, and is often used, for example, to describe social media posts in which the unselfconscious user accidentally reveals their own unflattering traits. That, I think, is how these stories of Lardner's may be said to "work." The reader has to see through the self-presentation to the truth, but it isn't hard. 

The husband is of a type described by Miller in Death of a Salesman and by Lewis in Babbitt, a sort of Chamber of Commerce dunce. Here he is on the story's first page, when we're just getting to know him:

Yes, sir, we was married just fifty years ago the seventeenth day of last December and my daughter and son-in-law was over from Trenton to help us celebrate the Golden Wedding. My son-in-law is John H. Kramer, the real estate man. He made $12,000 one year and is pretty well thought of around Trenton: a good, steady, hard worker. The Rotarians was after him a long time to join, but he kept telling them his home was his club. But Edie finally made him join. That's my daughter.

These few sentences aren't a bad introduction to Lardner's subjects and methods, in "The Golden Honeymoon" and most everywhere else. Have you not heard of John H. Kramer—note the use of the middle initial, conferring dignity—"the real estate man?" (In that case, you must not read the business section like a serious man.) Lardner's characters are obsessed with attaining a level of social prestige—by how much money they make, by whom they marry and associate with, whatever is required to be esteemed by others. You can imagine that the son-in-law must be quite the specimen of humanity, given his income and that he can afford to put the Rotarians on the back burner. The Rotarians are like a running gag in "The Golden Honeymoon." When the celebrating couple finally gets to Tampa, the husband makes sure to mention if any of the other retirees he meets are Rotarians, and he never misses a social club meeting if a Rotarian is going to speak on a topic such as the current business climate. A couple less obvious things to mull over. Is it social climbing that moves Edie to make John H. Kramer join the Rotarians, or does she maybe just want the tedious drudge out of the house? I am surmising that if our narrator praises his son-in-law for being "a steady, hard worker," it means the guy's a tedious drudge, but Edie would know for sure. Also, who gets married a week before Christmas?—unless there are extenuating circumstances the Rotarian worshiper chooses not to divulge. 

The question about what Edie makes of her husband prefigures one concerning what "Mother" (the narrator's designation for his wife) makes of her husband. For he is a manifest drudge, and she's been married to him for fifty years. That's a long time to listen to his patter. It doesn't seem possible, but in Florida there occurs a plot twist that places him in a more ridiculous light. By chance, they meet some fellow vacationing septuagenarians—a Michigan veterinarian and his wife. It happens that more than fifty years ago the vet had been the narrator's rival for Mother's hand. Naturally, the narrator attributes his former rival's long-ago relocation in Michigan to humiliation over having not been chosen by Mother. Naturally, the narrator makes invidious comparisons between his former rival's white beard and his own more youthful looks. Naturally, the narrator thinks that the Michigander did not make as good a match as he did. The problem with the vet's wife, the narrator informs us, is that she talks too much and brags about her kids, which is likely true but of course it's definitely true about him. This is where college freshmen write "Irony" in the margin of their anthology. 

Absurdly, these two men reenact their courtship rivalry from a half century ago. It seems that the vet and his wife are at more ease financially—their lodging situation, the restaurants they favor—and you can imagine the pain this causes our narrator. He makes it unintentionally plain while ostensibly criticizing the other fellow's lack of thrift. When the couples play five hundred, opposite spouses are partners, and the Michigander and Mother always win. They then joke about being "a winning team," a detail the narrator cannot prevent himself from noting. He begins lobbying for competitions at which he excels, the main one being checkers, a game whose name is virtually synonymous with simplicity. His victory of fifty years ago is nothing for him now and, notwithstanding an ability to maintain a tone of chatty ease, his irritation radiates. In the presence of the women, he says something rude to the Michigan man, whose name is Hartsell (the narrator has hurt his thumb while losing a game of horseshoes):

Well, my thumb was giving me considerable pain and I felt kind of out of sorts and I guess maybe I forgot myself, but anyway, when we was about through playing Hartsell made the remark that he wouldn't never lose a game of cards if he could always have Mother for a partner. 

So I said:

"Well, you had a chance fifty years ago to always have her for a partner, but you wasn't man enough to keep her."

The Hartsells are offended and thereafter avoid the narrator and his wife, whose vacation days, like the story, are anyway coming to an end. But not only the Hartsells are offended: the narrator's wife stops talking to him. His annoyance extends to her, so in order that there might be a happy ending she has to make a conciliatory move—which she does, by comparing Hartsell unfavorably to the man she married.

Usually in Lardner, everything is obvious and there is no one to cheer for. In a fairly typical situation, there is "romantic interest" between a cad and an attractive woman alert to the possibilities for getting ahead. They mutually exploit one another and the reader is obliged to hate them both, along with whatever supporting cast might be occasionally hustled on and then off the stage to enhance the presentation of trivial villainy. What I like about "The Golden Honeymoon" is the suggestion, however faint, that Mother has been "managing" this dummy for fifty years. It's her penance for having married him. At one point in the story, the narrator is running down Hartsell's wife, cataloging her faults, when he sees fit to register Mother’s response:

"You are getting too cranky. Maybe she does talk a little too much but she is good hearted. And Frank is always good company."

This is a rare instance in the fiction of Ring Lardner: a human being plausibly defended by another human being, who credits the accused with having "a good heart." The story also succeeds, I think, as a quietly desolating account of the wan fun to be enjoyed among retirees beneath the Florida sun. 

Twins in July

The Twins in July: 10 wins, 12 losses, their second losing month in a row. In the AL Central standings, they're in first place by one game, which I believe is where they stood at the beginning of the month, too. The second-place Guardians were also a tick below .500 in July, while the third-place White Sox moved into strong contention with a 16-11 month. The Sox are only a game behind the Guardians. You probably don't have to be a probability-and-statistics nerd to calculate that being in a 3-way race diminishes the Twins' chances of eventually winning the division. If one team is chasing you, they could get hot. If two teams are chasing you, there's twice the chance that one or the other will get hot.

The Twins’ principal weakness isn't hard to diagnose: since June 1, their pitching staff has a 4.71 ERA, the highest in the American League. Only two relievers, Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax, have been consistently reliable, and, as to the starters, two reliable ones might be stretching it considering that in his most recent start Joe Ryan, who looked like an ace in April and May, served up five home run balls. But let's say they have four who have been sorta good. That makes, like, nine who sorta definitely haven't, and, since there's a game almost every day, those nine pitch about twice as many innings as the four. Yikes! In their most recent win, the Twins led the Padres by 7-1 going into the ninth. Since Jax had pitched the seventh and Duran the eighth, Tyler Duffey was on the mound, and it went like this: hard-hit out, walk, hit by pitch, home run. At this point, Joe Smith started warming up in the bullpen, and Smith hasn't gotten anyone out since approximately Memorial Day. Not sure how we got the last two outs as I was googling the suicide prevention number. 

I'm sometimes flummoxed by how the Twins use their thin staff. For example, in the game described above why, if you want to give Duran an inning in a one-sided game, would you assign him the eighth inning? Bring Duffey in and then, if he shits the bed and the score tightens, you have your best reliever still available. If Duffey does well, you can pitch Duran in the ninth inning of a 7-1 game. I don't stay up for "Twins Live," but if someone asked manager Rocco Baldelli that question, I'd be interested in his answer. 

It's a little surprising that the Twins, with the league's worst ERA over the last two months, have over that longish stretch of games nevertheless been able to win almost half the time. Their fielding is usually good, especially on the left side of the infield when Urshela is playing third base—he's really good, and Correa is all-star caliber at shortstop. Outfield play is solid too. Their hitting can be shut down by a good pitcher—some teams have good pitchers—but the Twins can beat up the roster-fillers just like other teams do to our guys. Buxton is on pace for more than 40 homers, Arraez has the league's second best on-base percentage, Jose Miranda has for the past two months hit about as well as anyone in baseball, and several of our other guys are far from being easy outs. 

Probably the most that could ever be said for the Twins is that they're the best team in a weak division. Starting tonight against the Tigers, they can prove it's so: of their 61 remaining games, 32 are against their four divisional rivals, which is to say, more than half their games are against the two teams that are chasing them (White Sox and Guardians) and two other teams that are saved only by Oakland from being the worst in the American League (Tigers and Royals). They need to win more than they lose from here on out. 

Bill Russell, 1934-2022

When I was a kid, I read through the part of the school library where the sports bio/memoirs were shelved. Though it was hard then to satisfy my appetite, I think now that almost all these books were just efforts to cash in on celebrity while it lasted. Since most of the "authors" probably didn't have the time or inclination to write anything, it was also a financial windfall for the sports media person who received a "with" or "as told to" credit. But two of these books made a lasting impression, one by Jackie Robinson called I Never Had It Made and the other, by Bill Russell, who died yesterday, called Go Up for Glory. As I remember them, these memoirs eschewed behind-the-scenes, locker-room revelations but did include quite a lot on the subject of race in America. Russell, for example, unless I'm remembering the episode from another source, related in his book a story about hotel accommodations when he had been selected to play in some kind of college all-star game. He called ahead to make sure there'd be no issue with him staying at the hotel—if memory serves, the game was going to be played in one of the Carolinas. The manager told "Mr Russell" that there would of course be "no problem"—most likely, arrangements had already been made. Russell, who would've been only about 20, was a little put off by what he took to be fake hospitality, and so pushed the envelope by asking whether he could also use the hotel's swimming pool. Moments of dead silence followed by, "Of course, but we'd ask that you try to be inconspicuous." Russell then observed, with a mix of glee and bitterness, that, being Black and 6-10, the chance of being "inconspicuous" at the hotel swimming pool, in Carolina in the 1950s . . . unlikely. 

The Times's obit is here. In 13 professional seasons, he led the Celtics to 11 NBA championships—for purposes of comparison, Michael Jordan won 6 with the Bulls, and LeBron James has won four. Thirteen seasons is enough for the cast of supporting players to have entirely turned over: Russell was the common link between Bob Cousy and Bill Sharman and, later but repeat Celtic champions as well, Don Nelson and John Havlicek. He also won two NCAA championships at the University of San Francisco and an Olympic gold medal in 1956. Though a dominant player, he did manage to be something like inconspicuous on the court. As the obit points out, he disdained dunking and gesticulating celebrations of his prowess. Instead of spiking shots of opposing players into the fifth row of seats, resulting in an inbounds pass for the other team, he tipped them toward teammates and open spaces, causing turnovers and, often, triggering a Celtic breakout and lay-in. 

His career as a citizen-activist lasted his whole life. In his prime with the Celtics, he participated in the March on Washington and was seated in the front row when King delivered his most famous speech. His outspokenness created enemies. He received threats and his home was vandalized. He was proud and at least sometimes prickly. Long after they were retired, his former teammate Bob Cousy, who's white, sent him a letter expressing regret for not having publicly taken Russell's side on civil rights issues, including one occasion when Cousy played in an exhibition game boycotted by Russell and other Black players after they'd been denied service at a hotel restaurant. The letter went unanswered, according to Cousy, until he received a phone call more than two years later. President Obama awarded Russell the Medal of Freedom. A few years later, when Trump said protesting NFL players should all be "fired," Russell, now well into his 80s, posted to Twitter a picture of himself with his medal, kneeling. 

 

 

Lying in bed

 

 

Found myself last night thinking about car alarms while lying in bed. Take a guess why, you'll be right. I just typed "car ala" on my keyboard and Google, taking instant note of where other typists of these characters in that order have ultimately landed, suggested, of all things, "car alarm keeps going off."

Out of every thousand times a car alarm goes off in America, how many can be attributed to an auto theft in progress? I choose to speculate about a thousand occurrences in order that the probable answer might climb as high as the first counting number, which I'm pretty sure it would not if we were talking about only a hundred occurrences. This being the case, car alarm seems to me a misnomer. Nobody was calling 9-1-1 or running out in the street in their pajamas to defend their motor vehicle. The neighborhood was not alarmed, only annoyed. 

I am not a scholar of the works of Karl Marx, but he was lying down on the job if his critique of capitalism makes no mention of its tendency to produce for sale and profit devices that make life unambiguously worse. On another day I'll tell you what I think about leaf blowers.

The Buckley Rule

Though no expert on Republican intramural politics, I do know about The Buckley Rule, named for the founding editor of National Review, and according to which conservatives contemplating the field in a Republican primary race are to choose the rightward most viable candidate, or the rightward most electable candidate, or the rightward most candidate with a snowball's chance in hell of winning the general election, or something—there are various formulations, it seems. I used to think the weakness with all the formulations was that they placed too great a burden on anyone who would be guided by the Rule. On the one hand, you have to be crazy enough to vote for a complete lunatic. On the other, you have to be lucid enough to comprehend when there aren't enough voters crazy as you to make the lunatic "viable" or "electable." 

I wonder now whether The Buckley Rule doesn't tend to resolve the supposed dilemma in favor of the rightward most candidate, period. If the Rule were in universal operation, then everyone would be contemplating a vote for the biggest loon, a fact that would seem to go a long way toward making her (or more frequently him) "viable." Remember that, on account of gerrymandering, the Venn circle of districts that are a lock for the Republican candidate lies almost directly atop the one for districts in which the Republican has any chance at all. A Republican who can win the primary is therefore "viable" (or "electable") in the general, almost by definition. 

I'm only being around one-third facetious about this as I believe the theory, if that's the word for it, has considerable explanatory power. For example, it offers a way of understanding how ambitious but obviously flawed—deeply, almost laughably flawed—people can end up in the Congress. By moving to the rightward fringe, their deficiencies are washed away—because if you're the most rightward, you're probably the most rightward viable, too. I'm thinking of you Matt, Marj, Lauren, Louie, others. The only thing bad about being an ignorant vulgarian is that, theoretically (but probably not actually), it makes you "unviable."

Peter Meijer is a Republican House member from Michigan. He voted to impeach Trump, so of course he has a MAGA challenger in the GOP primary. This challenger, whose name is John Gibbs, recently told the Detroit News, "There are many great Americans all around the country who were actually conceived from rape." He's just another whacko with a strong claim to being the most rightward, viable candidate. This is one of those races in which the local Democratic party in Michigan is spending money to boost Gibbs's candidacy. Viewed through the lens of The Buckley Rule, their calculation is evidently that "viable" means something closer to "could win" than "most likely to win." The Cook Political Report seems to agree and, on the supposition that Gibbs will defeat Meijer in the primary, has for now placed the general election race in the "toss up" category.

The Buckley Rule may have confounded itself, unless the goal was always just to strike a pose. When Buckley first enunciated his Rule, it meant Goldwater for president, not Rockefeller, and Goldwater lost 44 states. The thing about The Buckley Rule is that to the degree it's honored, either consciously or not, it probably has the effect of making Republicans lose more elections than they otherwise would. But it also makes it more important that they lose, since the consequence of them winning is . . . take a look around. The J6 Committee is trying to show them that Trump isn't viable, but they're too crazy to be persuaded. Meanwhile, perplexed journalists wonder aloud why more Republicans don’t renounce Trump. It’s because there hardly are any sane Republicans left on the scene—they’ve all been defeated, many by an insane Republican in a primary, and the remnant is doomed. Liz Cheney, for example, is sure to lose her seat. 

Good bye dog, hello horse

The younger girl left today for horse camp after saying quite an elaborate good-bye to our dog. Just a flip "See ya" for dad.

Does anyone understand very well the connection between kids and animals? I feel like my kids aren't the only ones who, when there were around a hundred words in their vocabulary, knew the names of all the common pets, farm animals, and several more for good measure too: dog, cat, horse, pig, cow, bird, frog, snake, fox, donkey, bug, zebra, monkey, butterfly, wildebeest—the last is the only one I'm kidding about. It's like they're all born zoologists.

Animals have a featured role in ten million kids' books, and if it's going to be a chicken-or-egg question, my answer is that the authors are catering to, not creating, the interests of kids.  Regarding dogs, in particular: why is it practically impossible to catch even very young children making a category mistake? Dobermans, St. Bernards, German Shepherds, boxers, collies, French poodles, cocker spaniels, bulldogs, labs, pit bulls, Irish setters, beagles, Rottweilers, huskies, Golden Retrievers, Jack Russells, Dachshunds—without instruction, kids effortlessly identify all these as dogs, and never call a non-dog a dog. (Maybe they'd be tricked by coyotes or wolves, but still.) In other areas, they make mistakes, and you can detect a learning process. They talk about the toes on their foots, because with language they first learn rules and, later, the exceptions. But soon as they know the word "dog," they apply it correctly to all the different breeds and varieties of friendly mutts, though to an adult eye many of these look no more alike than a tabby and a red fox (which is another mistake they'd never make). 

It seems they should be confused, but they aren't. Maybe I'm way off course about this. If not, I have no idea what accounts for it. If you google, say, "kids and animals," you end up reading about how it's good for kids to have pets, but nothing that explains the natural affinity between them and the animals that hog all the space in their earliest working vocabulary.  

Family watches tv

With no Twins game till tomorrow, I watched with the older girl, Lydia, who is 14, a couple Jeopardy shows that we'd recorded. Toward the end of one of them, Ken Jennings announced that the subject for the final Jeopardy round was going to be "Opera." Lydia moaned. "I'd only bet a dollar," she announced, "cuz unless they mean Opera Winfrey, I'm screwed." 

Told her I was screwed no matter what Opera they had in mind. 

Schopenhauer: essays and aphorisms

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) published his most famous work, The World as Will and Representation, in 1819, when he was 31. It was not well enough received to land him a permanent academic position, so it's fortunate for him that he was what we'd call a trust fund beneficiary—his father, a successful businessman, had drowned in a canal, quite likely a suicide, when Arthur was 17, and his share of the inheritance, invested conservatively, yielded an annual income of approximately twice that of a university professor. He settled into a modest but comfortable life of study and leisure at Frankfurt. He did not lack confidence in his own merit; here is a passage, from a later book, in which he is no doubt backhandedly explaining why his "masterpiece" had been largely forgotten:

If you want to earn the gratitude of your own age you must keep in step with it. But if you do that you will produce nothing great. If you have something great in view you must address yourself to posterity: only then, to be sure, you will probably remain unknown to your contemporaries; you will be like a man compelled to spend his life on a desert island and there toiling to erect a memorial so that future seafarers shall know he once existed.

I can imagine him trying not to betray his gratification upon reading the Wikipedia article on himself, especially:

Though his work failed to garner substantial attention during his lifetime, Schopenhauer had a posthumous impact across various disciplines, including philosophy, literature, and science.

The article about him in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a trove. His name has become associated with "pessimism," which is a little simple without being unfair. Here is a characteristically straightforward expression of a dim view that also possesses, I think, at least a bit of uplift:

The conviction that the world, and therefore man too, is something which really ought not to exist is in fact calculated to instil in us indulgence towards one another: for what can be expected of beings placed in such a situation is we are? From this point of view one might indeed consider that the appropriate form of address between man and man ought to be, not monsieur, sir, but fellow sufferer, compagnon de misères. However strange this may sound it corresponds to the nature of the case, makes us see other men in a true light and reminds us of what are the most necessary of all things: tolerance, patience, forbearance and charity, which each of us needs and which each of us therefore owes.

It was perhaps hard to live up to this creed, for the same volume includes:

What the pathetic commonplace heads with which the world is crammed really lack are two closely related faculties: that of forming judgments and that of producing ideas of their own. But these are lacking to a degree which he who is not one of them cannot easily conceive, so that he cannot easily conceive the dolefulness of their existence.

It also includes a section titled "On Women" that I think we might all agree is bereft of ideas that were ahead of their time. An American reader, meanwhile, might be startled by the following, which follows the chauvinism by only a few pages:

Man is at bottom a dreadful wild animal. We know this wild animal only in the tamed state called civilization and we are therefore shocked by occasional outbreaks of its true nature: but if and when the bolts and bars of the legal order once fall apart and anarchy supervenes it reveals itself for what it is. For enlightenment on this matter, though, you have no need to wait until that happens: there exist hundreds of reports, recent and less recent, which will suffice to convince you that man is in no way inferior to the tiger or the hyena in pitilessness and cruelty. A weighty contemporary example is provided by the reply received by the British Anti-Slavery Society from the American Anti-Slavery Society in answer to its inquiries about the treatment of slaves in the slave-owning states of the North American Union: Slavery and the Internal Slave-Trade in the United States of North America. This book constitutes one of the heaviest of all indictments against mankind. No one can read it without horror, and few will not be reduced to tears: for whatever the reader of it may have heard or imagined or dreamed of the unhappy condition of the slaves, indeed of human harshness and cruelty in general, will fade into insignificance when he reads how these devils in human form, these bigoted, church-going, Sabbath-keeping scoundrels, especially the Anglican parsons among them, treat their innocent black brothers whom force and injustice have delivered into their devilish clutches. This book, which consists of dry but authentic and documented reports, rouses one's human feelings to such a degree of indignation that one could preach a crusade for the subjugation and punishment of the slave-owning states of North America. They are a blot on mankind.

This book, Essays and Aphorisms, is a roller coaster ride. I find myself reading passages over and over again—but not, as with other philosophers who have a place in the humanities curriculum, because I'm conscious of having failed to apprehend the meaning. 

Matt Birk speaks

 

Republican state legislators impose abortion bans with no exception for rape—in Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, South Dakota, Texas, maybe others by now too, unless this summary is up to date.

Opponents observe that these laws mean forced birth for sexual assault victims.

Matt Birk, Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Minnesota: I can't believe the other side keeps playing the rape card! Did you know I was a football player? The culture is stealthily encouraging abortion by telling women they should have a career and look a certain way . . . "all these things!"

But what a sense of humor. You have to admit, he's funnier than Herschel Walker. 

The Uvalde report

The gang that loves wisecracking about the conclusions of climate scientists every time there's one cool day has been quiet for a while. In order to feel something besides the oppressive heat, I skimmed the Texas House Committee's report on the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The effect was not cooling. Apparently 376 cops responded and were on the scene. That seems like a lot—the population of the county is 25,000, but there were the city cops, state police, border patrol, officers from the county sheriff's office, etc., etc. Unless I missed it, the report (which is 77 pages long) does not explicitly state that this might have been part of the problem, but the way in which responsibility can, in a large group, get spread so thin as to dissolve entirely is a pretty well-known phenomenon of psychology. There was only one shooter, and it took 376 cops about 70 minutes to confront and kill him. I wonder if just four might have done better. 

It's not exactly true that all 376 stood around for an hour or more, doing nothing, waiting for instructions, or for rifle-rated shields, or something. From the report (page 74): 

The initial responders to the west building heard gunfire and encountered a hallway with a fog of drywall debris, bullet holes, and empty rifle casings. They converged on Rooms 111 and 112, which they identified as the location of the attacker. They acted appropriately by attempting to breach the classrooms and stop the attacker. The attacker immediately repelled them with a burst of rifle fire from inside the classrooms. 

He was finally killed around 70 minutes later. According to the report, some of the kids died on the way to the hospital, and they might have survived but for the elapsed time. On the previous page (73), the report had noted, without comment:

There was no legal impediment to the attacker buying two AR-15 style rifles, 60 magazines, and over 2,000 rounds of ammunition when he turned 18. 

Duh! Have they not heard of the Second Amendment? John Cornyn, one of Texas's two senators, was the Republican leader of a bipartisan committee that, in the aftermath of the tragedy, hashed together a bill that could pass the Senate. On June 22, he tweeted out a list of ideas that had been dropped from consideration since, as he put it, if any were included "the bill would not command the votes needed for passage." In other words, of 50 Republican senators, there were not 10 votes for any of the bullet points listed below.

 

These are ideas we rejected in the bipartisan agreement on principles for gun-related legislation announced yesterday. Why? Because we knew that if they were included, the bill would not command the votes needed for passage. pic.twitter.com/dfrAWmYJM2

— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) June 13, 2022

Domestic

"Well, it's better than it used to be"—what I tell myself each day after devoting 5 minutes to house cleaning. I haven't thought it all the way through, but am beginning to suspect a fallacy connected to the question of whether it might nevertheless be worse than it was 23 hours and 55 minutes ago. 

Postscripts

 

One of the pleasures of a New Yorker subscription is reading the brilliant if alarmingly regular obituaries, composed by a staff writer, of a recently deceased colleague at the magazine. It's not for nothing that these people have found their way into a certain line of work. The most recent specimen, here, concerns John Bennet, an editor unknown to the public, who is eulogized by quite a well-known writer, Nick Paumgarten. The piece enumerates some "Bennetisms," including:

A writer is a guy in the hospital wearing one of those gowns that's open in the back. An editor is walking behind, making sure that nobody can see his ass.

If you don't like something I write, remember: there's no one walking behind me! Paumgarten says he has on the wall of his office a draft of a long "Profile" he'd written for the magazine. It had been edited by Bennet, and somewhere around the middle several consecutive paragraphs, spreading across a few pages, were X'd out. In the margin, Bennet had chicken-scratched the justification for this long excision: "Blah, blah, blah." If you are at all inclined, I recommend the whole thing—it's not long (no blah, blah, blah). 

Here is another recent contribution to the genre, Ian Frazier's obituary of Martin Baron, a fact checker at the magazine for 35 years. Quoted snippets cannot convey its excellence, which has something to do with a modulated and understated tone that creates an overall effect well beyond the sum of things explicitly stated. Apparently not the easiest fellow to know too well, though esteemed by Frazier, Baron had become a superannuated figure, awaiting his end in an apartment in the Bronx where he smoked Marlboros out of the presence of home healthcare workers and, with politeness almost awkward in its formality, conversed with an old colleague who had come for a last visit. 

The video above is of comedian Dina Hashem. I think she's hilarious, often in a similarly understated way. The bit in this routine concerning the former boyfriend with an unusual sexual proclivity seems to relate subterraneanly to the recent handiwork of some state legislatures.

Boyfriend: I like sex with pregnant women.

Hashem: I'll gain a few pounds for you, but that's as far as it goes.

Boyfriend: But it would turn me on to feel a life within you.

Hashem [deadpan but exasperated, indicating her body with hand gestures]: I'm alive. 

Hinderaker hustle on Ohio 10-year-old

I recently mocked Sen. Ron Johnson, MAGA-WI, for what I considered to be double-think regarding abortion law in the US. The senator has been a strong opponent of Roe and has even expressed support for a national abortion ban. Then, after the draft opinion overturning Roe was leaked, he said that abortion "isn't going away" and that a Wisconsin woman could procure one simply by driving to Illinois. So why all the fuss? "Life begins at conception, and abortion is murder, but, instead of getting upset with people like me, just travel to a state where they aren't as uptight about homicide as we are here in America's Dairyland." That seems to be his most recent position.

But he's not the only flexible thinker, as the terrible saga of the Ohio 10-year-old rape victim who traveled to Indiana for an abortion shows. The first impulse of many was to suggest that the story could only be a fabrication intended to embarrass opponents of abortion rights. As to the question of what abortion laws ought to be, this struck me as a diversionary tactic, since the scenario very well could be real: that is, the claim is that very young girls are sometimes impregnated in sexual assaults, and that in Ohio they cannot receive a legal abortion. Is that what the law ought to be? Now it turns out, of course, that the story was not fabricated. This isn't a hypothetical in a political debate: the 10-year-old exists, she was pregnant after being sexually assaulted, and she went to Indiana for an abortion. Those who were sure they had detected a scam needed a new story. For example, John Hinderaker, of the Power Line blog, had on July 12 posted an article beneath the headline "Story of 10-year-old rape victim crumbles." By my count, this was his fourth contribution to the genre—he had made the same assertion in articles posted on July 7 ("About that 10-year-old rape victim"), July 8 ("Biden hops on the rape bandwagon"), and July 10 ("Journalism then and now"). When the "tale" that had "crumbled" was indisputably confirmed, he added an "Update" to the July 12 post that reads:

It turns out, apparently, that the rape was real, and the rapist has been arrested. He is a 27-year-old illegal alien. According to local news in Columbus, the rape was reported on June 22, but as of July 11, Ohio Attorney General David Yost said he could find no evidence of a rape investigation. The alleged rapist was arrested the next day. Perhaps the national outcry over the case had something to do with the arrest.

Left unexplained is why the girl did not get an abortion in Columbus, where there are two abortion centers, one operated by Planned Parenthood. Ohio's Attorney General says the abortion would have been legal in Ohio, and that is consistent with my reading of the Ohio statute. For some reason, the Indiana abortionist who fed this story to the press, evidently for political purposes, has gone quiet and stopped responding to inquiries. I think there is more to be learned about this story. In the meantime, I hope they throw the book at the rapist.

Quite an oily rhetorical exercise, in my opinion, beginning with "apparently." He suggests in the first paragraph that he was led astray by the Ohio Attorney General, then quotes the Ohio Attorney General as an authority in the second paragraph, where the new villain is the "abortionist" whom he had called a liar even though, as he now apparently admits, she was telling the truth. The place for the penultimate sentence, it turns out, was in the four original articles, not the "update," which is also notable for the way in which the author can barely contain his contempt for legal abortion while at the same time indicating, sort of, that in this case the girl should have made use of "abortionists" employed by "abortion centers" in Columbus, Ohio. 

Could the girl have gotten a legal abortion in Ohio? Hinderaker says that she could have, just as Ohio's Attorney General did, but neither man cites any language to justify this conclusion. The statute is here; anyone can read it. I don't see where it says that, in a case like that of this raped 10-year-old, abortion is permissible in Ohio. There is no exception for rape. There's no provision relating to the age of the person seeking an abortion. The abortion ban is comprehensive, after about six weeks' gestational age (before many women realize they are pregnant), except that it "does not apply to a physician who performs a medical procedure that, in the physician's reasonable medical judgment, is designed or intended to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to prevent a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman."

It isn't at all clear that this condition pertained to the 10-year-old. What is clear, I think, is that the purpose of the statute is to make abortion practically impossible in Ohio.  One of the ways it does that is by intimidating doctors who might contemplate performing them. When does a problematic pregnancy cross a border so that it threatens to cause either the woman's death or "the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function?" (Note substantial and irreversible: both have to apply.) The impossibility of answering this question means there will be no abortions, but the ambiguity, apparently, also allows Hinderaker and the Republican Attorney General of Ohio to assert that the law does not do what it in fact does. At least, no doctor following the advice of a competent lawyer would ever perform one. 

They want to make abortion impossible in every case. At the same time, they want to be able to deny that they are making abortion impossible in every case. Though, to be fair, not all of the cranks and fanatics are so slippery. Today, Jim Bopp, the Indiana lawyer who, in anticipation of Roe being overturned, wrote model legislation for states seeking to severely limit abortion rights, told Politico that under his proposed law the 10-year-old would be required to carry her pregnancy to term.

"She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child," Bopp told Politico in an interview earlier today.

Books of the Bible: Zephania

I haven't given up on this eccentric project I set myself. It's just that many of the remaining books are dauntingly long (the Chronicles, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah) or, like Zephania, obscure (and likely for good reason). I think I have around a dozen to go, which means, if the psalmist is right about the years of man being three score and ten, that I need to tackle two per year if I am to brag about having read and commented on every biblical book in my interview with St. Peter six or seven years hence.

Today, Zephania; in six months, Haggai! Maybe "eccentric" isn't the word. 

For me, the Pauline phrase "through a glass, darkly" describes the experience of wading through the three chapters of Zephania. I can make out that God is mad:

"I will utterly sweep away everything
from the face of the earth," says the Lord.
"I will sweep away man and beast;
I will sweep away the birds of the air
and the fish of the sea.
I will overthrow the wicked;
I will cut off mankind
from the face of the earth," says the Lord.

But what is it this time? The commentators concur: it's "religious syncretism" that, according to Zephania, has set him off. The worship of God's chosen, in other words, has been sullied by the incorporation of elements from the religious practices of non-chosen peoples. This explains the references, in the passage following the above, to Canaanite ("Baal"), Ammonite ("Milcom"), and Assyrian ("host of the heavens") religions. To the non-specialist, general reader . . . almost perfectly impenetrable.

Since I haven't much to say about Zephania, let me just point out that the God of the Bible must sometimes confound the theologians. For example, it seems that God's anger does not fit well with his supposed omniscience. Was he surprised that his people would incorporate aspects of Canaanite religion into their worship—or, for that matter, that his directive concerning the tree of knowledge would be ignored? Also, he's hard to please on the details of the worship of him. Amos, Zephania's fellow among the twelve "minor prophets," had inveighed:

I hate, I despise your feasts
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings,
I will not accept them,
and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

There is no suggestion here that the worship practices have been adulterated by foreign influence. The various offerings presumably meet specifications. The problem now is that "good worship" results in complacent piety, the enemy of justice and righteousness, which he chiefly desires. This idea is not altogether absent from Zephania:

Come together and hold assembly, O shameless nation,
before you are driven away like the drifting chaff,
before there comes upon you
the fierce anger of the Lord,
before there comes upon you
the day of the wrath of the Lord.
Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land,
who do his commands;
seek righteousness, seek humility;
perhaps you can be hidden on the day of the wrath of the Lord.

As to the conclusion to the above passage, a commentator directs us to a different parallel passage in Amos:

Hate evil, and love good,
and establish justice in the gate;
it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts,
will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

The strong overall impression one receives is of consuming anger. I hate! I despise! I will sweep you from the face of the earth! The animals, too! And he's not easily appeased. You can be hidden on the day of wrath, perhaps. It may be that the Lord will be gracious. This anger is so obtrusive as almost to obliterate the consistent teaching of Israel's prophets, not ever memorably expressed in Zephania, where it nevertheless is generally still in line with the distillation of, for example, Micah:

He has showed you, O man, what is good,
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

To give the anger its due, place the emphasis on "showed." God's human, non-omniscient emotion is of exasperation. 

Squirming while watching Twins

Sitting here watching the Twins blow another lead in Texas. In the first game of this series they scored 5 runs and lost by 1. Yesterday they scored 7 and lost by 2. Today they were ahead 3-0 before allowing a 2-out, 3-run double in the bottom of the second inning—this, after the number 9 batter walked on 4 pitches to fill the bases. Hard to watch if for some reason the atoms in your brain are arranged in a way that makes you care. Aaron Gleeman, the Twins beat writer for The Athletic, recently set out the following statistical tidbit under the heading Minnesota pitching ERA by month:

April         3.16
May          3.64
June         4.18
July          4.31

Reminds me of when I took "the calculus sequence" in college:

Calculus I       A
Calculus II      B
Calculus III     C

I could quit registering for math classes; the Twins have to play out the schedule. That 4.31 was before this game started. It's higher now. Gleeman just put out the numbers without comment but I think they explain why the Twins were 9 games over .500 at the end of May and 7 games over now.

If you like the Twins, but have enough of a life not to spend it scouring the Internet for news droplets about them, I can keep you filled in. Here's another courtesy of Gleeman:

Last 35 games for Jose Miranda

.312 BA
.348 OBP
.560 SLG
.908 OPS 
6 homers
9 doubles

Again, no comment from Aaron, just the facts, but I'm thinking Miguel Sano, who is currently on a rehab assignment in the minor leagues, may have taken his last at-bat for the Twins. If so, I will no longer have to avert my eyes when he's hitting with a 1-2 count.

Byron Buxton gets a lot of sneers for missing so many games, but, in his defense, he's played enough so that currently only four guys in the majors have hit more homers than he has (23). And he hits them when it matters: 14 of the 23 have lifted the Twins into the lead from either a tie or small deficit. According to the reporting of Do-Hyoung Park, who covers the Twins for mlb.com, he's also one of the principals in the following charming story. Around a month ago the Twins were playing Detroit, Griffin Jax on the mound, when the batter hit a rocket into the right-center gap. Buxton raced back, leaped on the warning track, extended his arm, and had the ball tick off the end of his glove just as he collided with the wall: a double, and the batter eventually scored, though the Twins won the game. That night, about 1 in the morning, Jax's phone dings. It’s Buxton, who has been stewing about not catching that ball, and he apologizes to Jax for the nick on his ERA. Park quotes the text, so I assume he saw it. Jax replies along the line of: that was a missile, if you didn't catch it the ball wasn't catchable, no one I'd rather have playing behind me in center field. Fast forward to the Twins' recent series in Chicago. Jax is pitching, two on, no outs, batter drives one into the right-center gap. The metric used to rate fielders' "outs above expected" says batting average on balls like this one is .820. The base runners seem to believe it—they both take off, but Buxton runs the ball down on the warning track, catches it, and, wheeling, throws back to the infield, where a triple play is easily completed. In the dugout Jax approaches Buxton and says he hopes he can now forget about the ball in the Tiger game.

Unscholarly notes on Madame Bovary

1. The title character is a "fallen woman," which is the one thing a lot of people (including me) know about Madame Bovary. When I began making my way through it, I kept waiting for the adultery to get started. But it takes awhile. Here's the first time:

The broadcloth of her habit clung to the velvet of his coat. She leaned back her head, her white throat swelled in a sigh, and, her resistance gone, weeping, hiding her face, with a long shudder she gave herself to him.

In my edition, this occurs on page 152 of 330. I could be wrong, but I feel like if you opened at random a paperback romance novel, the kind with a Fabio-looking guy on the cover with a swooning lady, and let your eye fall somewhere on the page, you might read a sentence a lot like this one. 

2. So what's going on for the first 150 pages? Well, the book begins, not with Emma Bovary, the title character, but with the man she ultimately marries, Charles Bovary, whose youth is described, and a fair amount too about his parents. Eventually we learn a fair amount about Emma as a girl and young adult. The author (Gustave Flaubert, 1821-1880, pictured) is at pains to describe, for example, her reading habits. She consumes novels, some good, others not, and I wonder whether the point isn't to supply an explanation of sorts for what's coming. Her reading tempts her to expect a lot from life, like in the plots of books in which Big Things happen to the heroines. They have to in order to keep the reader's interest up. But Big Things will not happen in the life of a woman married to Charles Bovary. She's unhappy, bored, "unfulfilled." Thus the wandering eye.

This isn't stated. The novel, however, feels highly wrought: everything for a reason, details are connected in subterranean ways, and the reader has to do some of the work.

3. The reason you have to wait till page 152 for what you knew was coming: the first object of Emma's extracurricular affection, Leon, though highly interested, is too tame and conventional to force the moment to a crisis, and something similar could be said of Emma. After many longing and reciprocated looks, he limps out of town, which by the way is a small one far from Paris: when the locals go to a city, it's Rouen. The novel's subtitle is "Patterns of Provincial Life." The next candidate, Rodolphe, a local landowner, is slick, confident, unrestrained, and therefore it is the velvet of his coat to which Emma's habit clung as her white throat swelled and "she gave herself to him."

To fill in some details of the plot, Rodolphe in time cruelly jilts her on the eve of their planned escape, and, in a twist, she soon meets up again with Leon, who this time proves a satisfactory replacement. 

4. The title may have the effect of leading you astray from the main theme of the book, having to do with provincial life, the principal feature of which one might get at by asking: Who in the novel is admirable or likable? You can look high and low among the main characters. It's not like there are many villains, either. Emma's two lovers are different types of louts beneath their respectable surfaces. She herself, a shallow self-seeker, chooses them, though that's not precisely right: they are merely available. The small-town druggist, Homais, is a self-satisfied and self-described "man of science," a progressive skeptic and author of absurd articles of which he is way too proud. The village priest, another mediocrity, is a kind of foil to the druggist. After Emma has killed herself, and Charles is away with his grief, these two in mutual and charitable decency keep a vigil with the corpse, and there occurs maybe my favorite passage in the book:

Homais attacked confession. Bournisien defended it: he dilated on the acts of restitution it was constantly responsible for, told stories about thieves suddenly turning honest. Soldiers, approaching the tribunal of repentance, had felt the scales drop from their eyes. There was a minister at Fribourg . . .

His fellow watcher had fallen asleep. Bournisien found it somewhat hard to breathe, the air of the room was so heavy, and he opened a window. This woke the pharmacist.

"Here," the priest said. "Take a pinch of snuff. Do—it clears the head."

There was a continual barking somewhere in the distance.

"Do you hear a dog howling?" said the pharmacist.

"People say that they scent the dead," answered the priest. "It's like bees: they leave the hive when someone dies."

Homais didn't challenge those superstitions, for once again he had fallen asleep. 

Monsieur Bournisien, more resistant, continued for some time to move his lips in a murmur, then his chin sank gradually lower, his thick black book slipped from his hand, and he began to snore.

5. Christian moralists might be disappointed to learn that Emma's sexual sins aren't the proximate cause of her descent into despair. In her grasping desire, she lived well beyond the family's means—a path made possible by successive promissory notes she signed, without Charles's knowledge, in favor of the village loan shark, who in time of course demands payment. Now she's up against it, and seeks new sources of capital. One candidate indicates that he might be willing if only she will sleep with him, and she angrily rebuffs him. Later, more desperate, she arranges an interview with Rodolphe, and lets it be known that she'd like to recapture past magic. He's interested till she reveals her financial plight. When the transactional aspect of the proposal comes into view, he coolly dismisses her, and the narrator with equal equanimity observes that "of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling."

The book is sometimes funny; also, thoroughly grim and pitiless.

6. When she has failed to get money, and the Bovarys' household goods are about to be sold pursuant to a legal writ in order to raise funds for the creditor, Emma gets into the druggist's storeroom and eats arsenic. Flaubert writes:

Soon she was vomiting blood. Her lips pressed together more tightly.  Her limbs were contorted, her body was covered with brown blotches, her pulse quivered under the doctor's fingers like a taut thread, like a harpstring about to snap.

Then she began to scream, horribly . . . .

Not long thereafter, some villagers are gathered around her corpse, a few of them because they are preparing her for the funeral:

"Look at her," said the hotel-keeper, with a sigh. "How pretty she still is! You'd swear she'd be getting up any minute."

Then they bent over to put on her wreath.

They had to lift her head a little, and as they did so a black liquid poured out of her mouth like vomit. 

Just trying to reinforce the point about "grim and pitiless." Hard not to connect the brown splotches and black liquid with Emma's swollen white neck in the first love scene with Rodolphe. That sentence seems in retrospect an intended parody of the novels Emma liked to read. The real Flaubert describes the physical symptoms of poisoning and the scene in the room with the corpse, where a stupid, romantic sentiment is immediately exposed—not by an authorial comment but just as a necessary conclusion of the detached narration. 

7. The time has come to speak of Charles. His desperation while Emma is dying, and genuine heartbreak after her death, tend to elicit sympathy. But what an obtuse dolt! I'd almost go so far as to say Flaubert nodded, for in this supposed masterpiece of realism it seems unbelievable that Charles should never have suspected a thing. It's not as if Emma took elaborate pains to deceive him, or hesitated to answer a few questions with outlandish lies: such gestures would have indicated a measure of respect, and she had none for him. She didn't care what he felt or thought. After she's dead, he discovers among her things the saved letters of her lovers. Even then he is at first in denial. Also, he's impoverished, because his stuff has been sold to pay off the loan shark. Yet he grieves copiously? He respects himself about as much as she did, and takes his place among the novel's gallery of rather poor, though not villainous, human  specimens. 

8. Charles and Emma had a child together, a daughter. She makes no appearance for long stretches. When she is seen, she's often being carted away to a nurse so that her mother can pursue her interests. I cannot now remember what plan was made for her when Emma thought she was about to run off with Rodolphe. Maybe I'm a poor reader but it is no point of emphasis in the narration. The girl exists to be neglected. Had the Bovarys been childless, the novel would barely be different, but it would lack this little accent mark of sadness. Charles does not survive his wife by long: on the last page the little girl discovers him sitting oddly in a chair and, thinking he's playing, gives him a little push, and he falls over. Now she's officially an orphan, and the novel at its end. 

What a waste

Embarrassing but true: I look like Nixon when someone is explaining to me about fishing. Did you know that you have to set your beer down if you catch one? And then hold its scaly body while trying to yank the hook out of its throat. Just the worst. Only makes sense as a subsistence activity in a primitive economy.

Spent some time chatting on the couch with my girls tonight. The younger one is starting middle school in the fall. The older one, a middle school grad, was therefore providing an overview of the teachers, their strengths and weaknesses, which ones are to be avoided at all costs, etc. Regarding a certain Spanish teacher, her entire summation was, "I love how real she is, she even swears at us."

I felt a twinge. All the effort of suppressing my impulses—wasted. 

Patriotic reading refutes patriotic opinion

For a Fourth of July activity, pre-Twins game, I've been skimming some of the Federalist Papers. These are the series of 85 essays, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, that were published in New York newspapers beginning in October of 1787. The purpose was to persuade New York to ratify the Constitution that had been drafted that summer at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. I might have mentioned before that the twenty-second, in which Hamilton inveighs against the equal representation of states, is one of my favorites:

Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Delaware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts that fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority must prevail. Sophistry may reply that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of all the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America

After the word "America" Hamilton inserted a footnote that reads:

New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Georgia, South Carolina, and Maryland are a majority of the whole number of States, but they do not contain one third of the people.

Hamilton's animus is here directed against the Articles of Confederation, which had been adopted in 1777 and now were about to be replaced, he hoped, by a new Constitution. Yet Article 1, Section 3, of the new Constitution he was recommending begins

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State. . . .

and the logic of his argument against the Articles therefore applies to the Constitution's Senate as well. Moreover, the goal was to get New York to ratify the new Constitution, and New York was one of the big states that would be underrepresented in the Senate—dwarfs such as Delaware, Rhode Island, and South Carolina would have "equal weight in the scale of power," thereby violating "every rule of fair representation." The original readers of Federalist No. 22, New Yorkers weighing whether their state should ratify the new Constitution, might have noticed that "two senators for every state" was just another instance of what Hamilton purported to be condemning. Why should they ratify a Constitution that, in the upper chamber of the Congress, would place their interests and sense of the public good on a level with South Carolinians'?

James Madison somewhat sheepishly answered this question in Federalist No. 62:

The equality of representation in the Senate is another point which, being evidently the result of compromise between the opposite pretensions of the large and the small States, does not call for much discussion. . . . A government founded on principles more consonant to the wishes of the larger States is not likely to be obtained from the smaller States. The only option, then, for the former lies between the proposed government and a government still more objectionable. Under this alternative, the advice of prudence must be to embrace the lesser evil; and instead of indulging a fruitless anticipation of the possible mischiefs which may ensue, to contemplate rather the advantageous consequences which may qualify the sacrifice.

When contemporary liberals complain about senators from Wyoming (population: 600,000) cancelling the votes of the senators from California (population: 40 million), or point out that the senators voting to confirm the justices who overturned Roe represent considerably less than half the country's population, they elicit stern lectures on what the Founders, out of their endless store of wisdom, wrought. But what these contemporary apologists call "wisdom" was hated by Hamilton and regarded as "the lesser evil" by Madison, who recommended it only because it was necessary to get the small states on board. 

In No. 22 Hamilton had continued, after the passage quoted above, to argue:

The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifice of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength, of its government is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must in some way or other go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority in order that something may be done must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good.

I have been used to thinking of this as a prescient critique of a "tone" that would finally prevail well over 200 years in the future. But I now think the force described by Hamilton was operating on him at the time he wrote these words. It was necessary that something be done, the new Constitution had to be ratified, and a "pertinacious minority" was thus able to impose its will on the "respectable majority," with the result that "the sense of the smaller number prevailed," the public good was compromised, and every state, regardless of its population, got two senators—not because it was wise, just, and good but only so that the new Constitution could get ratified. 

Twins in June

The Twins in June, meh: 13 wins, 15 losses, their first losing month of the season. Could have been worse considering that the month began and ended on seasonal low points. On June 1 and 2, they lost games in Detroit, capping off a series in which they fell in four of five to the lowly Tigers. Their pitching staff was in tatters—just getting to the 9-inning finish line each day was a challenge, without regard to the question of winning or losing, and their next nine games were against the Jays, Yankees, and Rays, all playoff teams. Somehow they went 5-4 in those three series. They were bumping along like that till the end of the month, when they had another 5-game road series, this one in Cleveland against the Guardians, who are proving to be their main competition in the AL Central. They won two one-sided games and lost the other three, all after late-inning leads had been bollixed by the bullpen, the last two, on the 29th and 30th, by the walk-off homer method. 

The problem of just finding a pitcher to get you to the end of the game has again arisen. On June 30, locked in a tight contest against the team with the best chance to finish ahead of them in the division, the Twins were reduced to sending Tyler Thornburg to the mound for the eighth and ninth innings. Who, you might ask, is Tyler Thornburg, thereby making my point for me. He pitched to eleven batters, retiring five of them. Of the other six, three walked, one was hit by a pitch, and two got hits. Four scored, two in the eighth and two in the ninth, including of course the guy who hit the walk-off dinger. Thornburg threw 48 pitches in the game, and, of the 47 that didn't hit the batter, 26 were called balls. His place on the roster has now been taken by Juan Minaya, who was called up from the Twins' Triple-A affiliate in St. Paul, where he had compiled a 5.73 ERA over 22 innings pitched.

The Twins reportedly are in talks with other teams about possibly acquiring bullpen help. You might say that their desperation is partly their own doing. At the start of the season, they traded Taylor Rogers, a bullpen stalwart over the past few seasons, as well as prospect Brent Rooker, to the San Diego Padres for pitchers Emilio Pagan, Chris Paddack, and Brayan Medina. Pagan has been a leading figure in the bullpen collapse—he has an ERA north of 5 and a WHIP north of 1.4. Paddack hasn't pitched since early May and recently underwent Tommy John surgery. Medina is struggling in the low minors. Rogers has a 2.84 ERA and 22 saves for the Padres.

The Twins record against the Guardians this year has been crazy. In eleven games played so far, Minnesota has outscored Cleveland 61-45—and won just five times. The six losses have been by a total of seven runs. The Twins are one game ahead of Cleveland in the AL Central standings.

Though it's not as if there haven't been bright spots for a team that's still in first place. Luis Arraez continues to lead the American League in batting average (.343) and on base percentage (.421). Byron Buxton has played in just 60 of the team's 80 games but still has slugged 21 home runs—Aaron Judge is the only hitter in the majors with more than 23. The beleaguered pitching staff has received a respite from some unlikely sources, such as Devin Smeltzer, who in his last couple of starts has allowed just one run in 12 innings pitched. Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax have both pitched well in relief all year. Alas and alack, there's a game every day, and they can't pitch in all of them. What did fans of the Boston Braves used to say? 

First we'll use Spahn
and then we'll use Sain.
Then an off day
followed by rain.
Back will come Spahn
followed by Sain,
and followed
we hope
by two days of rain.

But if you're calling in guys from the bullpen, it already hasn't rained.

Justice Thomas looks forward

During their confirmation hearings, Supreme Court nominees are routinely asked what they think about this issue or that case, and they routinely answer that it would be inappropriate for them to comment since, if confirmed to the Court, they might have to rule on that very question. Justice Thomas, in his confirmation hearing, sometimes followed a different strategy. When asked his opinion of Roe v Wade, he said that he couldn't comment—not because it would be inappropriate, but because he had no opinion at all. According to him, he'd never thought about it. He was then confirmed, and as a fiftyish man soon had to form his first ever opinion about the Supreme Court's abortion jurisprudence. It turns out that, after careful study, he regards with contempt the notion that there is a constitutional right to abortion. In the recent Dobbs case, reversing Roe and Casey, he was not content, for example, just to join the majority opinion. He said in a separate concurring opinion that the majority was correct to reverse the court's previous abortion decisions, but he wanted to go on record stating what he thinks should happen next. Here's the passage, from pages 118 and 119 in the Court's collection of the different opinions in the case, here:

The Court today declines to disturb substantive due process jurisprudence generally or the doctrine's application in other, specific contexts. Cases like Griswold v Connecticut (right of married persons to obtain contraceptives), Lawrence v Texas (right to engage in private, consensual sex acts), and Obergefell v Hodges (right to same sex marriage), are not at issue. . . . For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is "demonstrably erroneous," we have a duty to "correct the error" established in those precedents.

I've omitted the case citations in the text, but the phrases "demonstrably erroneous" and "correct the error" are in quotation marks because Justice Thomas is referring to previous opinions of his. It's pretty clear that the rule against indicating what you think about a question that might come before the Supreme Court evaporates once you've been confirmed to a lifetime appointment. Justice Thomas is saying, very explicitly, that he thinks the legal reasoning underlying these other precedents is "demonstrably erroneous" and that the cases should be reconsidered, in the manner of Roe and Casey. He's advertising for business from the kind of right-wing interest groups his wife often represents in her lobbying business. "Here's what I think; bring some cases, appeal them up to the Supreme Court, I'll take your side." Is there another way to understand what he's saying? 

Conservatives complain about "the swamp" in Washington but there is no swampier institution than their own Supreme Court. Its composition is determined by an actuarial lottery augmented by political machinations. The confirmation hearings are absurd charades in which the nominees lie and dissemble and a majority of senators pretend to believe them—although, I have to admit, some of the senators are so stupid that they may actually believe them. Once on the Court for life, the justices step out of their threadbare disguises and commence ruling as their political sponsors (and the rest of the sentient population) knew they would. Occasionally one of the justices expresses puzzlement, or annoyance, over why so many Americans should think they're just partisan hacks in robes. When Justice Amy Coney Barrett took her turn, Mitch McConnell was standing beside her. Maybe they want to rub our faces in it, or maybe they're so invested in the scam as to be rendered clueless about how it looks to honest people. I don't know. Barrett and two of her colleagues—that's three out of the nine, and half of the right-wing super-majority—were appointed to the Court by a traitorous coup plotter, but it's doubtful he'll ever go to prison, or even be indicted, and nothing will happen to them in any event: the fruit of the rotten tree will be lording it over us for a couple generations, assuming the country holds together that long. 

 

Prayer at the 50

Someone has aptly said that so long as there are tests in math there will be prayer in schools. But prayers concerning solutions to story problems, being by nature private and silent, do not end up the subject of First Amendment litigation. The high-school football coach leading his players in prayer at the 50-yard-line is different, though as of yesterday, according to the Supreme Court, as acceptable as a cry from the depths about algebra. The one probably unusual opinion I have about the case relates to the question of "what Jesus would say." Seriously!

One side favors the decision because people have to be free to practice their religious faith. The other side condemns it because the coach is using his position to coerce students into participating in Christian prayers at the end of a school activity. Jesus, in the sermon on the mount, says:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. . . . [Matthew 6, 5-8]

Standing on the street corner babbling like a pagan seems to me a lot like kneeling at the 50-yard-line, babbling like a football coach. The conservative justices imagine they've struck a blow for religious freedom, but they've merely given their imprimatur to shallow displays of religiosity. Sorry, Jesus says, not me. 

Meanwhile, back in the real world, where there are still public schools, it's too bad that kids who want to play on the team will have to put up with this crap. 

 

Surfing

A hard day of surfing the 'Net can yield up some interesting morsels. I knew, for example, that Tony Oliva, who will be inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame later this summer, had a fabulous rookie season in 1964, and that one of the categories in which he led the American League that year was total bases. Yesterday I saw that he had 374 total bases in 1964—his 217 hits included 32 homers, 9 triples, and 43 doubles. Brooks Robinson, the American Leaguer with the second most total bases in 1964, had only 319. To catch Tony, Robinson would have had to hit, for example, 28 additional doubles. The guy in third place, Harmon Killebrew, had just three fewer total bases (316) than Robinson, and that's pretty much how it goes down the line. Tony-O lapped the field. Not sure anyone ever had a better rookie year. 

In an unrelated field, the spring of 1969 was the last time a majority of justices on the Supreme Court had been appointed by a Democratic president. That's 53 years now. In that time, 17 justices have been appointed, 13 of them by Republican presidents. Over the same period, Republicans won 7 out of 13 presidential elections (and got more votes in only 5 out of the 13). On the current court, 6 of the 9 justices were appointed by Republicans even though, over the time period they were appointed, Democratic candidates won more presidential elections. Seems obvious to me that the justices should serve for a set period of time with terms expiring at regular intervals—probably one every other year, so that two new justices are appointed during each presidential term. Take it out of the hand of God (who decides when justices croak) and Mitch McConnell (who, when a justice croaks, decides whether the sitting president gets to appoint the replacement). 

 

Latin lesson

I wrote a while ago about Chuck Grassley's Twitter feed, which is enjoyable when he performs his great-grampa-in-Iowa act:

If u lost ur pet pidgin /it’s dead in front yard my Iowa farm JUST DISCOVERED here r identifiers Right leg Blue 2020/3089/AU2020/SHE ///LEFT LEG GREEN BAND NO PRINTED INFO. Sorry for bad news

— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) September 19, 2020

But he's also one of a hundred US senators, and when he tweets in that capacity . . . not sure his mental acumen exceeds the average for his demographic cohort:

For many today’s decision is about far more than correcting Roe it means that the rights of the unborn are no longer in jeopardy This ruling empowers the ppl thru their elected reps to make commonsense policy decisions It takes policymaking out of the hands of unelected judges

— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) June 24, 2022

Maybe he's unaware that back in the mists of time, like yesterday, some unelected judges held that the people of New York, acting through their elected representatives, could not enact "commonsense policy decisions," related to carrying guns in public, that they deemed necessary to promote safety and the general welfare. The law was adopted more than a hundred years ago.

Stare decisis must be Latin for "previously owned by an old lady who only drove back and forth from home to church and the grocery store." Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, bought the jalopy: "This decision [reversing Roe] is inconsistent with what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents that the country has relied upon." Sucka! (She also voted to acquit Trump at his first impeachment trial, since, she said, "he's learned his lesson.") 

Polling shows that only a quarter of respondents say they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the Supreme Court—a record low. I'd like a gallon freezer bag full of whatever the 25 percent is smoking. It evidently will transport you to a faraway land where the swamps smell of wisteria.  

Act now to be an American hero before the bar is raised

 

Hearing people talk about Mike Pence being an American hero put me in mind of Sam Morril's bit in the above clip. It's a great time to be a guy—the bar is so low—and an even better time to be a Republican. He went on a date and did not commit any felonies: an American hero! He was recruited to play a part in the overthrow of the government but instead he did what the Constitution required, thereby daring to disappoint the guy who tried to get him killed: another American hero! Now if only the first guy could kick his porn habit and the second would testify about what he knows. 

Mark Shields, 1937-2022

Mark Shields, who died this morning, was for years a Friday night political commentator on PBS NewsHour, formerly known as the McNeill Lehrer Report. He'd discuss the week's political news with a conservative sparring partner—earliest one I can remember was Paul Gigot, then David Gergen, and most recently David Brooks. I must have seen a thousand of these segments in the 90s and early aughts, often the midnight rerun while the effects of happy hour were starting to wear off. Today, everyone is saying what a mensch he was, and I'm sure it's true, but if you only knew him because you consumed political journalism on TV what stood out (besides the fact that I almost always agreed with him) was his wit. He once said, on live television, something like, "Regarding Chris Christie, I'm probably about the last person who should tell him to join a gym. But let me tell ya something: watching that guy get out of an SUV, it was like watching the Russians get out of Afghanistan. Took that long." 

He was an Irish Catholic, a Marine, a Notre Dame grad (major: philosophy), a sports fan (Red Sox and Georgetown basketball), smart and funny and, according to the testimony of many, kind—one thing about the Christie quip, he wasn't punching down. 

Update: I keep forgetting it's 2022. Here's the clip. It's hilarious that Rush Limbaugh fans faulted him for "mocking Christie's weight."