First Looks category archive

Via Job’s Anger.

In case you haven’t noticed, I have added a link to the “Old Time Radio” item on the sidebar, over there ——>, to the “Old Radio Programs” website.

It has wonderful content and I commend it to your attention.

If you have not done so, I highly recommend that you read Lena Horne’s autobiography.

Our next number is dedicated to all the boys and girls at Fox News.

In The Roanoke Times, James J. Hentz tries to make sense of some of Chief Justice Roberts’s statements during the oral presentations of the pending suit against gerrymandering and find himself unable to do so. Here’s a bit of his article:

Chief Justice Roberts stated during oral presentations on the gerrymandering case, Gill v. Whitford : “The intelligent man on the street” will deduce that, if the Supreme Court rules with Democrats in a gerrymandering case, “it must be because the Supreme Court preferred the Democrats over the Republicans. .?.?. And that is going to cause very serious harm to the status and integrity of the decisions of this court in the eyes of the country.”

First, for a usually elegant and exceptionally bright jurist this is a confusing statement. If the court in ruling in favor of the Democrats signals a preference for them, would not ruling the other way signal a preference for the Republicans?” He seems to be saying the latter is fine. His statement shows how much creeping partisanship influences the court. Second, how is this statement consistent with a strict constructivist interpretation? I suspect Madison, no friend of political parties, is turning over in his grave.

Field pounds the grovel.

My local rag has an interesting article about how restaurants, lodgings, and service stations are selected to appear on those “services at the next exit” signs along interstate highways.

The weather.

I’m under it.

Juanita Jean explains the true moral of Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.”

Gina Barreca offers some guidelines at The Hartford Courant. Here’s a sample:

The second category is “Don’t Ever Say,” as in don’t ever say, “I can’t even imagine having another serving of that rich food — I’m stuffed!” as seconds are being passed.

(snip)

Don’t ever say, “I’m sure he only did that because he likes you. Lighten up.”

Don’t ever say, “Lighten up.”

More at the link.

The Portland Press-Herald’s Greg Kesich muses on the recent torrent of news (not “allegations,” news) of sexual misconduct by powerful persons, almost all of them men. A snippet (emphasis added):

What has changed is not that men are getting in trouble for doing things that used to be OK. It’s that stars are not getting out of trouble for doing things that everyone has always known were wrong.

I commend the entire piece to your attention.

Warning: Language and scorn and lots of them.