On The Oxford Comma

 My view of the “Oxford comma:” don’t use it or not rigidly. If the context makes clear that “and” signifies the last item in a series, then the comma is superfluous. If the penultimate item has more than one component requiring “and” to separate them, then the comma is in order.

Brief Exchange On Israeli Proposed Judicial Reforms

 R

1. It seems the status of Basic Laws confuses most everyone, but my limited understanding is that the Israeli Supreme Court has held that they should be treated as constitution - like.

2. Just because Israel doesn’t have a real Constitution doesn’t mean that the Parliament should therefore always have the final say, with a 50.1 % majority 

3. Democracy is not just majority rule, as it must also include certain sacred minority rights

4. Israel’s democracy differs significantly from all other democracies as it has one parliament ( no Senate, no Provinces ), and therefore doesn’t have the checks on single person rule that others do - especially the US ( famous for the gridlock that your friend Scalia says is the essence of the US system of checks that the framers wanted)

5. In addition to overturning Court decisions the same rationale applies to judge selection - compare to the US where a President nominates for Senate confirmation , often when they are from different parties

6. Finally the problem with these proposals is greatly magnified by the current government with the PM beholden to 3 parties that represent viewpoints that are anathema to a liberal democracy

One more point. I read Bibi’s book. He and his family have made a huge contribution to Israel. He may be Israel’s most important PM ever given his role in the economic transformation, promoting Israeli tech to the world, Abraham Accords and the fact that his view on peace / two states, often vilified, looks like it was correct.

Me

As to your points:

1. Limited understanding is right. How does Israel’s SC get to give various originating laws constitutional status. There’s not any example anywhere of a mature liberal democracy with a judicially created SC. Plus, the court is somehow tied into the AG and they work in tandem to try to engineer results that they want. An example of the SC’s over the top self arrogated power is its recent invalidating a Bibi cabinet pick on the non existent legal ground that it was “unreasonable.” “Unreasonable” is the SC’s judicially created basis for invalidating laws it doesn’t ideologically like.

2. Does lack of a written constitution make  it a jump ball as to who should have the final say as to which laws stand? I’d prefer a court that “stayed in its lane” to have that say on the basis of democratically set grounds. But when the unelected court arrogates extra legal power to itself, then the  jump ball is between a 3’ unelected group of judges and the 6’ people’s representatives. Right now the reform proposals are working their way through Israeli democracy processes, may well get moderated and will reflect in what they do to the court, democratic  processes bringing it back into line.

3. The protection of minority rights will be best be achieved by an effective court whose jurisdiction and limits are redefined to fit with how courts operate under the rule of law in all liberal democracies. VB granted and her good points well made, Canada’s notwithstanding clause represents a compromise between British parliamentary supremacy and US republicanism (not the party.) The reforms now reflect that compromise and, as noted, their final chapter has not yet been written.

4. Your point 4 in Israeli practice is the opposite of what you say. In effect, and as often noted, the splintered party system makes the Israeli theoretical unicameral government in effect multi-cameral to the point of ongoing political instability. 

5. In what liberal democracy does the judiciary or a quasi judicial body pick successor or added on judges? Answer: nowhere escort Israel. So among the the points counting against you here are: 1. that; 2. the people’s representatives as against an unelected core of a power centre that has arrogated to itself unprecedented power under any idea of the rule of law as functioning in liberal democracies around the world; and 3. the just mentioned reality of what is in effect a multi-cameral political system.

6. As to 6, I urge you to read this and deal with the arguments made, and as linked to by Whelan here:  https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-judicial-apocalypse-is-not-upon-us/.

Three Tweets On Doc, Bill Russell, Legend

 1 Compelling, stirring doc, Bill Russell Legend. But:

Too hagiographic?

It didn’t note specifically his activism’s acts (or did I miss them?)

I saw subtext that he seemed a bit purposeless after leaving Celtics (or do I read in too much?)

Were the last minutes over-egged?
—————

My feeling is, his undeniable athletic greatness grounds the off court greatness claimed for him that I’m unsure the doc makes a case for.

I miss what he did off court, other than commendably being his own man, that was so extraordinary.

I’d like to be told what I missed. 2/2
———-

P.S. 3/3

Where were acts by Russell even remotely comparable to the great magnitude of what Ali forfeited in refusing the draft, which the doc extolls but maybe unintentionally defines by contrast what Russell seems not to have come close to doing. 

Happy to be shown wrong.

A Few Thoughts On Film To Leslie

 Watched it with my wife. Had to rent it but I’m glad I did. 

I think it’s a terrific small movie that suffers not in its excellence by being small. And thats its arc is predictable bothers me not at all. 

Of course Riseborough is spectacular in it. (I checked out the “controversy.” What horseshit! A listers going all out to try to ensure Riseborough gets her due. I’m all for them doing it. She deserves the nomination and if publicizing her by feting her got her there I’m glad for it, even as the academy awards mean little to me.) 

I saw someone say her presence outstrips the movie (maybe like Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine.) I don’t agree with that in To Leslie though it’s true about Blue Jasmine. She is the movie; it’s about her and while her performance stands out she doesn’t overpower everything else. Rather there’s a symbiosis between her and everything else that’s effectively mutually reinforcing. 

In Blue Jasmine, what’s not Blanchett is Woody Allen at his most formulaic and flat. And even as in To Leslie the arc is predictable and we sniff out about 1/2 way, though in a very broad way, how it will end, the movement to the ending is organic —ok with maybe a dash of the formulaic. 

Btw, Allison Janney is utterly potent as the queen bitch. I’m not sure I was 100% persuaded by her final turn around though its effectiveness is helped by her hate-filled bitchiness in the midst of that turnaround as she machine guns Leslie with how awful it was how she abandoned her kid. 

Mind you, when she says she was at fault too in not stopping Leslie when she could have, as though there’s some equivalence between their faults, that seems misconceived to me. The way Leslie’s then raging drunkenness/alcoholism is described, there’s no way a friend’s stern warnings could’ve abated it. So that didn’t ring true to me. 

I also thought the Royal character was too much of an unconvincing distraction even though it fit in with the generally idea of wrecking yourself with booze and drugs. His howling at the moon, prancing around in his underwear or even naked is to me unneeded filigree, caricature.

There’s of course a lot more to be said about the film—Marc Maron, the music supplementing the action, the scene where he dumbly but with good intentions plays the tape of her winning the lottery, the scenes of her resisting drinking and so on—but I’ll leave it here.

8/10 is my score for it, if I were scoring it.

Thoughts On Film Stillwater

Me:

Watched Stillwater, long, engrossing, with a superb Matt Damon. It’s a real film, solid, serious, intelligent, mature, such a contrast with the crap out these days that Scorsese rightly baffed. I don’t care if it’s at odds with Amanda Knox’s story. It has its own truth that runs deep.

L:

Okay, I was getting ready to not like it. Fine acting by Matt Damon, you're right, but found the character too much of a dumb ass, as he calls himself. Also irked by what seemed like the requisite "deplorable" references -- rednecks, racists, xenophobes, and of course Trump voters. But then the second half kicked in, the dancing scene with Sammi Smith playing in the background, and I warmed to it. But then of course his ability to fuck things up reappears. I ended up mixed, though the final scene in Marseilles was pretty moving. The thing is, I get that he's damaged, as is his daughter, as she says, but  that doesn't seem enough to hang this sort of story on, is my general impression. But I agree that it's a whole order of magnitude above the usual comic-book retread. 

Me:



Good points all, even as I differ some (as law and custom insist I do.)

Knowing that in his person Damon is an entrenched D, in the Obama/Hillary Clinton mode, I had a preconception that that would inform his characterization of his character.

 But that melted away. A bad fuck up he was, but there is an underlying admirable stubborn strength to him and an admiration for his down to earth usefulness as when he fixes things in Virginie’s apartment and in the basement building and on the job in Marseilles as down to earth as that is. It gets him to functioning adequately in Marseilles, truck and all.

Those virtues especially shine in contrast to the theatre director and in what is effectively Virginie’s choice of Baker over the director. 

His first 1/2 goodness and practical virtue are also apparent from the jump when he helps Maya get the key to her apartment. His practical virtue shows too in the cultural and values differences between him and Virginie, for example in owning guns, where he doesn’t come out the loser or the worse for what he values. 

As well he channels and embodies the down to earth power, integrity and depth of the best of  country music. 

So for me, all that and much more—I could go on—melted away my preconception of slagging a deplorable. 

I guess two of my criticisms are:

basically the film goes on too long, which in some ways is a function of the two stories—exonerating his daughter; his new life with Virginie and Maya—not being more tightly interrelated so that I got the feeling at times I was watching two different movies; and 

keeping the murderer in the basement while waiting for the DNA test seems somewhat preposterous to me, more an inorganic plot device to unify the stories and and themes than something he’d do or not realize he didn’t need to do.

That said, I like the moral ambiguity pervading the film and his ability to accommodate it in his daughter and I love the inexorable sadness of the ending, how flat and changed for the worse Oklahoma seems to him after he loses what he had with Virginie and Maya.

You may not recall this but we disagreed about a previous film by this director, Three Billboards Out Of Ebbing Missouri, but with shoes more or less on different feet. I took quite sharp exception to it and you liked it a lot.

L:

I didn't realize this was by the same director as the "Three Billboards" movie -- and alas I can't even remember my own reaction to that, nor yours. But in this case, your take seems more in line with critical and popular opinion, judging by Rotten Tomatoes at least. And you make enough good points about the positive aspects of the movie that it makes me think I should give it another look. But your criticisms are well put too, and I agree with both, so I wind up mixed, as I was. I should look up that director though. 

On Deracialization

 

https://freeblackthought.substack.com/p/deracialization-now

The author, Greg Thomas, claims we conflate race and culture and they’re entirely or at least functionally or practically separable from each other and that for all of us deracialization is in order. What’s wanted is a rooted cosmopolitanism. Thomas says he is rooted in the culture, traditions and history of his people but he proceeds now in self identification as a citizen or the world but with roots in the culture of his “milieu,” his “idiomatic group”:

—————-

“Deracialization can be achieved while maintaining allegiance to specific idioms and practices that derive from cultural, ethnic, religious, and ancestral identifications. I know this is true because I myself have enacted this perspective by remaining rooted in an Afro-American cultural milieu via my family, close friends, and associates as well as the blues, jazz, gospel, and other forms and artifacts of expression distinctive to my idiomatic group. Yet I’m also a citizen of the wider world, as cosmopolitan as jazz itself has become. I’m willing to venture that there are many others in the U.S. and elsewhere who would take to heart a stance of “rooted cosmopolitanism” and discard the idea of race, the practice of racialization (as it exists on the census form for eg.) 

————

My first thought is that as things now stand self consciousness of race or ethnicity is ineradicable nor need it be eradicated in our private spaces even as I think “race and state” should be separated. 

And my thought is also that Afro-American cultural milieu” is inextricably bound up with the self consciousness of race and it’s not conflating culture and race to think so. They’re inextricable if one seeks self meaning from his heritage. Instead of deracialization or de-ethnicizing oneself, the better view, I’d think, is simply (or not so simply) not to be reductive or essentialist about it. Thomas, I think, is having it both ways, clinging to what he professes to be jettisoning from his sense of  himself.

Sent from my iPad

Analysis Of The Gambler (With James Caan)

1. I haven’t done this in a while. 

So here goes. 

I watched the last half of (James Caan) The Gambler. 

My estimation of it increased as I watched it to its end.

2. It’s ultimately a dark, upsetting film relentlessly tracing the descending arc of an emotionally crippled, neurotically driven, perverse man, Axel Freed.

3. It shows his addicted gambling to be an unreal abstraction informed by a bullshit sophomoric psychology/philosophy.

4. His idea is that picking winners is too easy. 

He picks losers because that has him dancing with loss and (somehow) testing his ability to will impending loss into victory.

5. The utter incoherence of this way of him seeing his gambling finds its equivalent in the sophomoric lectures Freed gives to his NYC literature class in big part on the theme that we can will two and two into being other than four.

6. Freed is a literature professor teaching at a New York City university. But this is so unrealistically depicted as to be but an unreal prop as meaningless as his addiction, as what drives it and as foolish as the content of his lectures.

7. We never see him preparing for a class or anything else that evidences what goes into teaching. 

He simply drops what he’s doing when it’s time and goes to teach his class. 

It’s artificially done and is a flaw in the film.

8. Caan’s acting is good. 

He effectively conveys the full repulsiveness and diseased impulsivity of Freed. 

Lauren Hutton, his girl friend, by contrast, is wooden.

She fails to make her character come alive.

9. Caan’s character is coherent as is his progression through the movie. 

It lays naked his bullshit personal credo by depicting his degenerating self destruction, which involves him repudiating that credo and becoming corrupt and corrupting.

10. He gets deeper into debt and, so, into trouble with the mobsters tied to his incessant gambling.

This even when he has means to absolve himself.

He loses the money he coerces his mother, a doctor, to give him, $44,000.00.

And he loses his hot streak Las Vegas winnings.

11. In the end Freed fails to live up to his jousting with loss and to will loss into victory. 

Near physical danger by the mobster he’s indebted to, Freed betrays any pretence of honour.

He agrees to corrupt a basketball player in his class by getting him to shave points.

12. In fact, that he really can’t live up to his own code is foreshadowed by coercing his mother to bail him out of debt and is after-shadowed by whining in disappointment to his wealthy grandfather for refusing to bail him out of subsequent debt.

13. When Lauren Hutton stands statue stiff as he tries sexually to coax her into responding to him, two and two stay adding to four despite what Freed wills.

He’s left mired in utter humiliating futility, as if embracing and kissing a fencepost. 

Finally, he just walks away.

14. In a near to final scene, Freed doesn’t know till the last minute whether the bought basketball player will shave the points.

He does.

But Freed then learns it’s not one and done.

He and the player will have to do more on pain of pain.

The mob has its hooks into them.

15. In a culmination of Freed’s perverse self loathing and degenerate self destruction, he gets into a vicious fight with a pimp, whose whore has dissatisfied Freed. 

While he’s beating the shit out of the pimp, taking his self hatred out on him, she slashes Freed across his face.

16. In the last scene, after staunching  the bleeding, Freed staggers to a mirror.

He smiles in perverse satisfaction at his bloody scarred face.

It’s the apotheosis of his sick self destruction, a perverse anti redemption of triumphant self punishment at his own putrid emptiness.

17. Freed temporarily expiates his fury with himself, sprung from finally seeing clearly what a scum he actually is.

18. My judgment is that The Gambler isn’t about a gambler or gambling. 

It’s more centrally about a mentally-diseased, intellectual-type man who acts out his pathetic neuroses and self-destructiveness through the medium of gambling.

19. Finally, Freed repudiates gambling by complicity in fixing games. 

His credo has shattered like a thin glass pane. 

His anti redemption is his perverse pleasure in the evidentiary visibility of being severely facially slashed, desirable punishment expiating self hatred.

20/20. And in the end, no one lives happily ever after.

The End