© F.X. Tobin
I’m published!!! My short piece, “The Anarcho-Libertine Manifesto, 2nd Iteration” (page 31) has been published by Paraphilia Magazine. In a nutshell, I call for the arts to be dangerous again and to not be afraid to use lush and opulent language.
Posted in The Internet
Tagged aesthetics, culture, economics, fiction, film, literature, manifestos, maximalism, non-fiction, Paraphilia, philosophy, poetry, politics, pop culture, religion, science fiction, sex, the internet
One can encounter the Chinese language in a variety of unlikely places. Captain Malcolm Reynolds upbraiding a crewmember in Joss Whedon’s space western TV series Firefly; Chinese characters strewn about Ezra Pound’s controversial epic masterpiece, The Cantos; and in numerous products one sees in finer Asian markets nationwide. For many Western readers, this reviewer included, Chinese represents a completely alien language. The challenge comes from a reader trying to find a point of reference with a foreign language, at least from a technical linguistic standpoint. For speakers of European languages, this becomes increasingly difficult. A Cultural History of the Chinese Language by Sharron Gu attempts to provide a means for non-specialists to approach Chinese, not from the technical and scientific discipline of linguistics, but from the discipline of literary history.
Gu couples this literary history with the premise that, because Chinese is so much older than other living languages, it is more refined and advanced. Gu asserts that,
Chinese evolved into a language as abstract as and analytic as German, as fluid as Arabic, and as suggestive and flexible as English and Spanish. Most important of all, Chinese has become a language of all these capacities at the same time.
Unfortunately, Gu’s book does not deliver on the premise.
A Cultural History tackles a diverse array of disciplines, including archaeology, anthropology, sociology, political science, and a history of philosophy, science, painting, drama, poetry, and literature. A comprehensive history of Chinese musical instruments is followed by an equally detailed history of poetry. Her explanation of the linguistic differences between different words is fascinating. The problem is not with individual sections so much as the overarching organization. The accumulation of details and minutiae overwhelms the reader. While touting itself as a book for non-specialists, it reads suspiciously like a dissertation-turned-into-publication. The book also sets itself up for confusion by its assertion in a single Chinese language, creating a linear progressive history of language evolution. While not a book on linguistics, the relative scant attention paid to major Chinese dialects (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) and languages related to Chinese (Mongolian, Vietnamese, etc.) is jarring and confusing.
The confusion reinforces Gu’s assertion, exposing its political agenda. Despite this being “a cultural history,” she writes about “the Chinese language.” The shaky cultural arguments reflect Gu’s nationalist bias. Gu really needed to explain the political history of China, since there are references made to dynasties and the Warring States. One needs to understand from the outset that the China we recognize today does not have the same geographic borders as these older historical entities. The editors should have insisted on a readily accessible apparatus for the non-specialist reader, including lists for: Chinese dynasties, literary terms, philosophical concepts, and words associated with painting, music, and drama.
A Cultural History of the Chinese Language is less a cultural history than a hyper-detailed edifice vainly supporting a thinly-veiled nationalistic mythology.
Here’s some of the Chinese from Firefly. Shiny!
Posted in book reviews, books, food, TV
Tagged asia, book reviews, books, China, culture, ezra pound, linguistics, nationalism, non-fiction, philosophy, poetry, politics, religion, science fiction, series, the cantos, TV, whedonverse
A limited-run series where I review three books about the Supreme Court of the United States, exploring its historical and ideological conflicts, and the transformations it wrought upon law and society.
This is the story of three Supreme Court cases. The three cases illustrate the real political power exercised by the Supreme Court and the concept of stare decisis, more commonly known as “binding precedent.” Furthermore, the reader should see this section as a kind of intellectual exercise. Legal legitimacy coupled with cultural acceptance creates a powerful cocktail that can make overturning legislation much more challenging.
The Court established itself as an independent branch of the United States government in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137(1803). This allowed the Court to operate as “final arbiter” in constitutional disputes. It announced to the Executive Branch that it wouldn’t act as the President’s handmaid. The Supreme Court is not a rubber stamp to the President’s ever-growing imperial power. (Congress has that job, at least in terms of its War Powers. Since Vietnam, Congress, in acts worthy of the Heaven’s Gate cult, seems perfectly comfortable with acts of self-castration. Besides, Congress engages in more pressing acts: seducing lobbyists, having affairs with staffers, and scanning wealthy families for trophy wife material.)
Coupled with its task as final arbiter, the Supreme Court utilizes the concept of “binding precedent.” In an ideal circumstance, the Supreme Court does not legislate from the bench. The Court either upholds or overturns the case based on precedent. A Justice can’t just say, “This is wrong, don’t do it.” A specific piece of legislation has to be deemed unconstitutional. Previous Court cases, other laws, and the Constitution itself must support the constitutionality of the decisions.
While Congress writes laws to be signed into law by the President, the Supreme Court interprets the law. But interpretation is a hollow exercise if it is not enforced. These three cases show how the dance between constitutional interpretation and legal enforcement become a balancing act between branches. Occasionally, these balancing acts spill over into public conflicts and duels.
Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944)
Holding: The exclusion order leading to Japanese American Internment was constitutional.
Majority: Black, joined by Stone, Reed, Douglas, Rutledge, Frankfurter
Concurrence: Frankfurter
Dissent: Roberts
Dissent: Murphy
Dissent: Jackson
Korematsu is a lingering black eye on the American legal system. It remains a damning indictment against the Executive excesses of FDR and the judicial spinelessness of his appointees. Alternately, Korematsu shows a patriotic Supreme Court upholding the will of the Executive in times of war against a ruthless enemy dedicated to brutality, terror, and warmongering. What do you think, Dear Reader?
The case, like the segregated armed forces and the alliance with Stalin, opens any number of vulnerabilities within the otherwise hagiographic treatment of the Greatest Generation. No amount of nostalgia or selective memory will disprove that our leaders and our citizens had feet of clay. The Second World War was not as black-and-white as the opposing forces in the Lord of the Rings. Reality, to quote Herman Melville, had more ragged edges.
The case itself upheld Executive Order 9066 that legalized the internment of Japanese-Americans. War hysteria following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor coalesced with decades of anti-Asian sentiment among Americans of European descent. While Japan had spies and other intelligence agents working towards infiltration of the US mainland, Executive Order 9066 involved tackling a surgical problem with a sledgehammer. Instead of targeting suspicious foreign agents working for enemy powers, it gave law enforcement the ability to arrest and imprison native-born US citizens. It invalidated constitutional protections offered to any citizen born in the United States to those who looked like the enemy. (Arizona’s recent anti-immigration law also reflects this racially motivated hysteria. Illegal immigration is a problem, especially in Border States, but turning every “Mexican-looking” person into a potential felon is a stupid solution.)
A closer analysis of the decision reveals the potential time bomb that would later explode in Brown v. Board. As Feldman writes in Scorpions,
With the war on, Black was disinclined to stand up for equality, even though his liberal, Catholic colleague Frank Murphy condemned the decision as pure racism.
Because the Korematsu case focused on a military order, Justice Jackson became torn and issued an enigmatic dissent, trying to balance “uphold[ing] a military order would distort constitutional law; striking it down would inappropriately second-guess military authority.” As opposed to Robert Jackson’s concept of judicial pragmatism, Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote a concurrence stating that the internment program “is not be stigmatized as lawless because like action in times of peace would be lawless.” Frankfurter believed in judicial restraint and opposed all measures to legislate from the bench. Frankfurter’s assessment opened up the possibility for repealing segregation with the reasoning that the internment was necessary because it was wartime. In peacetime, similar unfair treatment based on race was unconstitutional.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
Holding: Segregation of students in public schools violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because separate facilities are inherently unequal. District Court of Kansas reversed.
Majority: Warren, joined by unanimous
During the Fifties and Sixties, the Warren Court oversaw the greatest expansion of civil rights and individual liberties in recent memory. In Brown v Board of Education, Earl Warren wrote a unanimous opinion striking down segregation in schools. It was an act whose time had come. The Court followed in the footsteps of President Truman’s executive order desegregating the armed forces. Truman’s actions were relatively easier than what the Court faced. Unilateral action could be taken, since Truman acted as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. Desegregating schools was a trickier business.
The long winding road of Brown v. Board culminated in the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision. The unanimity of the Court gave the decision extra moral and legal heft necessary for such a radical social change. Scorpions relates how the Court reached a unanimous vote; routinely holding over the decision until the next year and then having it reargued. Only until Chief Justice Vinson, a proud Southerner and pro-segregationist, retired and with Justice Robert Jackson on his deathbed, were the circumstances right.
With stare decisis, the Court used Korematsu as a precedent to strike down Plessy v Ferguson. In oral arguments, evidence was presented that showed that “separate but equal” did not mean what it said. The races were separated but far from equal. Everything from racist stereotypes in pop culture to redlining to legal disenfranchisement were engineered to keep African-Americans from getting any ideas about racial equality. Plessy v Ferguson would not stand, since it was based on false pretenses. Korematsu came into effect because of the reasoning involved. The Japanese-American internment camps were created as a temporary measure.
Once the War ended, the camps would lack any basis for existence. Since the US Government knowingly created the camps as a racist containment strategy, the same could be said for legal segregation. Segregation contained “uppity blacks.” With the US triumph in the Second World War against racist tyranny, it seemed a tad hypocritical to defend racist social engineering. In addition, segregation was used as a canard to discredit American democracy. Justice Robert Jackson understood this, because he had jousted with Hermann Goering during the Nuremberg Trials. In the Fifties, the Soviets and American Communists consistently used segregation as an example of American capitalist evil. The United States also had the awkward experience of explaining to African diplomats and dignitaries why hotel clerks and restauranteurs were treating them like shit. Despite popular opinion to the contrary, especially but not exclusively, in the South, that the time had indeed come to rectify this perversion of democracy.
But it wasn’t all smooth sailing and waiting for segregationists to retire or die. The nine justices battled between striking down school segregation with a unanimous vote and the order to do it immediately. Like a refrain from a terrible pop song, the Court settled on a compromise. (Compromises being the go-to solution for America’s self-inflicted race-based problems.) In exchange for a unanimous vote and to appease stubborn Southerners on the Court, the Court decided to strike down Brown, but for the lower courts to establish their own timetables. “Gradualism” was the key word. Unfortunately, gradualism only sounded good on paper. This opened the door for states to drag their feet or come up with creative legal loopholes. This led to Southern governors challenging the Supreme Court’s authority, since the Court lacked any enforcement apparatus. Eventually we get the National Guard escorting little black girls to school and repugnant alternate uses for firehoses.
The Brethren picks up where Scorpions leaves off. With desegregation legal and mandatory, it opened up a can of worms for courts to unravel. If schools were desegregated, does that mean neighborhoods also need to be desegregated? Do schools have to match the racial ratios of the neighborhoods they serve? What about bussing? The challenges associated with desegregation stretch into the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties. Even in the Nine, the Rehnquist Court, made up of a conservative and moderate majority, sought to strike down Brown, but with little success.
Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 542 U.S. 426 (2004)
Holding: Habeas corpus petition had been improperly filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and should have been filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina; petition should have named Padilla’s immediate custodian, not the Secretary of Defense.
Majority: Rehnquist, joined by O’Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas
Concurrence: Kennedy, joined by O’Connor
Dissent: Stevens, joined by Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer
Padilla v. Rumsfeld appears like a culmination of Korematsu and Brown, but is in reality rather disappointing and dangerously inconclusive. We have the similar themes of rights violation occurring during wartime (Congress keeping its rubber-stamping ability to legislation expanding Executive power in fighting trim.) In this case, the concept of habeas corpus lay in the crosshairs.
Padilla, an American citizen, was held in the brig and charged as an “enemy combatant.” The case could have unraveled the Bush Administration’s legal basis for torture, extraordinary rendition, and other authoritarian atrocities committed in the name of liberty and freedom. (These colors don’t run, just the intelligence and common sense of the American voter.) In the end, the case was struck down on a technicality, since Padilla should have petitioned the brig’s commandant, not the Secretary of Defense. Unfortunately, this leaves a lot of questions unanswered and civil liberties extremely vulnerable to Executive malfeasance and whatever psychotic lunacy one can get away with by saying the magic words “national security.”
While Padilla is an unfortunate case, stare decisis and a future Court will have the opportunity to slay the dragon of Executive power run amok. Since the War on Terror is technically finished, we’ll see how the laws and executive orders issued during those tumultuous years will hold up under judicial scrutiny.
Posted in book reviews, books, Mondays with the Supremes
Tagged asian-american, binding precedent, black, book reviews, books, brown v board, catholic, catholicism, citizenship, communism, desegregation, enemy combatant, executive order 9066, Feldman, greatest generation, internment, japanese, korematsu, law, non-fiction, padilla, philosophy, politics, power, precedent, racism, Robert Jackson, rumsfeld, schools, segregation, Stalin, stare decisis, torture, world war 2, yoo
The Art of Reviewing explores reviewing as an art form and as a valuable element to understanding society and profiles specific reviewers of merit.
“Criticism does not always demonstrate its customary incisiveness: it often ignores the most worthless ephemera.” – Karl Kraus
“I would go to the stake for a sensation and be a skeptic to the last.” – Oscar Wilde
Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980) was a theorist, literary critic, and semiotician, but most importantly, he expanded the field of reviewing. In addition, he reinvented the ways in which things could be reviewed. He looked at old works in new ways. This installment of the Art of Reviewing will explore how Barthes reinvented and reinvigorated the concept of reviewing. (This article is not meant to function as purely biographical or theoretical, but more as a means to show nascent reviewers the potential of Barthes’s ideas and continually evolving philosophy.)
One of the great things about Barthes was his ability to deconstruct his own philosophical perspective. He began his career from the vantage point of orthodox Marxism, amplified with some semiotic theory taken from linguistics. In the end, his philosophy became more personal, intimate, and autobiographical. One of his last works was Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes. He was too inventive and too passionate to remain affixed to any particular philosophical or ideological box. As reviewers get older, their ideas change. The slow evolution from the ideological Marxist to contemplative individual makes for a useful case study in the importance of changing one’s mind.
Barthes represents an important bridge between the complicated Marxist mysticism of pop culture critic Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault’s large-scale deconstructionist archaeologies of institutions. Barthes’s writings are a Rosetta Stone of pop culture studies and how cultures manufacture ideology with its ephemera.
Mythologies (1957)
Written in 1957, Mythologies has tautly written dissections of French pop cultural artifacts and is an indispensible educational tool for aspiring pop culture observers. The first half has a collection of newspaper articles, most no longer than two pages, examining a specific item. The selection is incredibly diverse and disregards arbitrary barriers like High and Low Culture. It examines everything from TV wrestling matches (of the WCW variety), cuisine, science fiction, and museum exhibits. A veritable Whitman’s Sampler of cultural detritus, a monument to the mundane and commonplace. The second half of the book is an expanded explanation of semiotics (connotation, denotation, signifier, signified, etc.), along with its linguistic roots, and the accusation that the bourgeoisie is a “joint-stock company.”
Barthes takes the position of an orthodox Marxist to dissect and examine the cultural products of the postwar French bourgeoisie. His status as an ideological outsider gives him a much-needed critical perspective. The semiotic background gives him the intellectual apparatus to read the artifact. More specifically, to read against the grain of the status quo. In academic parlance, the “queer the text,” since Barthes was gay, like Foucault (and those contemporary Fifties bulwarks of American conservatism, Whittaker Chambers and Roy Cohn).
The book is a must read for cultural critics and curators of museums and historical societies. Less for the Marxist readings per se, but for the book’s illustration of how to read material culture. Material culture is a means of passing along our culture’s mores, codes, and traditions. While these things are important, anyone tasked with writing exhibit labels should understand how these things are socially constructs manufactured by humans. As such, each embodies a specific ideology and point of view. Whether that is good or bad depends on the individual’s interpretation. But one needs to understand that this manufactured ideology is present within the object. In the book, Barthes gives the example of the black child soldier in a French military uniform saluting on the cover of the weekly magazine Paris Match. On the surface, it is a poster that glorifies the patrie and the republican “us.” Dig a little deeper and one realizes that the poster operates as a legitimizing force for colonialism and imperialism. Mythologies was published shortly after France’s disastrous Indochina War (1946 – 1954) and amidst the brutalities of the Algerian Revolution (1954 – 1962). This explains the vituperative passion Barthes had as a Marxist and utilizing the tools of linguistics as an intellectual means of exposing the oppressive agendas buried beneath seemingly innocent pop cultural artifacts.
On a more mundane level, the miniature shopping carts kids push around the grocery conditions them to become consumers. Whether this is a horrifying example of mental abuse against a developing child or business as usual depends on the individual’s specific interpretation. But to say that this social conditioning is not taking place seems like a particularly weak example of willful ignorance. The recent rebooting of the GI Joe franchise and America’s Middle Eastern foreign policy seem like something far more ominous than tiny shopping carts. “Go Joe!”
Sade Fourier Loyola (1976)
Sade Fourier Loyola explores the works of three major innovators of language: the French philosopher, pornographer and atheist Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814); the French utopian socialist François Marie Charles Fourier (7 April 1772 – 10 October 1837); and Basque Spanish theologian and founder of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) Ignacio López de Loyola (Saint Ignatius of Loyola) (1491 – July 31, 1556). Barthes goes on to illustrate how each writer in this superficially blasphemous trio transformed language. How the three writers reflect off each other displays Barthes’s unique take on the subject, transcending the standard academic category of “comparative literature.”
Everybody has heard of DAF Sade, yet very few have read his works. In the opening sections of Sade Fourier Loyola, Barthes reflects on the contradictory accusations leveled against Sade: His works are boring and his works are shocking. How can one be both? Mythologies dissected pop cultural artifacts while Sade Fourier Loyola examined well-known works in a different way. The comparative literary criticism Barthes achieves is reminiscent of the ad slogan, “Think different.”
He examines Sade’s work, seeing it in mathematical terms, with each carnal atrocity building upon each other until they reach a séance, a kind of Enlightenment clockwork made of frenzied bodies. Sade’s writing exemplifies what Barthes terms “a contamination of discourses,” with extended speeches championing reason and rationality suddenly broken by curse-laced shouts and blasphemies involving orgies, murder, and torture. One of many things bedeviling critics is the inability to place Sade within a neat framework of periodicity. Sade is simultaneously a Gothic writer, embracing the darker strains of Romanticism, an Enlightenment philosopher, and a literary satirist. Furthermore, his work continually champions crime over law and power over morality. Those who are more powerful are thus because of Nature.
The theme of subservience is picked up in his analysis of Loyola, whose Spiritual Exercises bears resemblances to Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom. Each work appears like a glorified outline. While both writers come from completely different backgrounds, Barthes brings our attention to the meticulousness and concentration involved in writing these books. Loyola even has a section where the success or failure of the spiritual retreat’s practitioner can be measured on a graph. Loyola and Sade also have their practitioners in severe isolation and endure physical hardships.
Fourier, the utopian socialist, uses language that combines aspects of both Sade and Loyola. His utopia is spiritual in nature, but man’s perfection is attained by the release of bodily passions that have been repressed by civilization. Barthes also explores the playfulness of Fourier’s brand of utopia, especially regarding his notorious phrase about turning the sea into lemonade. The treatment of Fourier as a literary figure to be celebrated shows how Barthes has evolved from an orthodox Marxist to a non-ideological literary critic. Marxists shy away from Fourier because of his wild eccentricities and the non-scientific basis for his utopian vision. Barthes embraces him as he does Sade and Loyola.
The Pleasure of the Text (1975)
Barthes approaches reviewing and criticism as joyful acts, hence the title of the small book, the Pleasure of the Text. Inspired by Severo Sarduy’s Cobra, a novel about a Cuban drag queen who transforms into a Tibetal bardo during an orgy with leatherclad biker studs, Barthes wrote down mini-essays in alphabetic order. The essays focused on how a text can bring pleasure to the reader. He elucidates the much-misunderstood concept of the Death of the Author. The concept, maligned by the likes of Harold Bloom and Camille Paglia, does not involve turning a literary work into an amalgamation of social forces, thus negating the author. The explanation is much more prosaic.
The Death of the Author is thus: After the Author has finished his or her work; he has no control over it. The Author’s interpretative power is negated. This is because the Reader is not consuming the Author’s Interpretation, but simply a Text. (Barthes’s book can be seen as a precursor to the current discipline of Reader Reception Theory.)
The book also focuses on the concept of pleasure as it relates to the practice of reading. He asserts that literature does not require a moral component to be pleasurable to the reader. As an American subject to High School English classes, there was the tendency to examine works with a Major Moral Lesson, whether it was Grapes of Wrath or Heart of Darkness. Literary consumption became analogous to an annual teeth cleaning: painful, tedious, and instructive. But knowing the Moral Lesson made one feel good, or at least pass the quiz. What became a rarity was how to enjoy the texts as objects of pleasure. (Unfortunately, Americans have a schizophrenic relationship with pleasure and morality.)
When reading a text, this usually is administered to the skull.
Readers should be able to enjoy the language of the narrative without having to endure horse pills of morality. An appreciation can be made on how the author formulates the language in the same way art can be appreciated once one becomes aware of specific brushstrokes and manipulation of pigments. Appreciating books just on their moral level is stunningly pedestrian.
Roland Barthes was revolutionary both in what he reviewed and how he reviewed. He began as an orthodox Marxist but evolved a personal philosophy that embraced many things. Ecumenical and joyful, his approach to the review showed a writer both erudite and expansive.
FURTHER READING
Susan Sontag raised awareness of Barthes’s value to a well-rounded intellect. The closing line of her seminal essay, “Against Interpretation” (1964) reads, “In place of a hermeneutrics we need an erotics of art.” Barthes provides this much-needed erotics of art.
Sontag wrote two major essays on Barthes:
WORKS BY ROLAND BARTHES
At present, many of Barthes’s lesser-known works remain hard to come by. Except for Mythologies, his critical work remains unknown to lay audiences. This is unfortunate, especially since the Internet has provided the perfect medium for discussions about pop culture. The publisher Hill & Wang have volumes of Barthes more notable volumes in print. So long as one isn’t averse to scouring used bookstores and Internet shopping sources, one can also find his lesser known works in English translation. Despite his untimely death, Barthes remained prolific.
His instrumental work in the interpretation of pop cultural artifacts and Susan Sontag’s relentless championing should be reason enough to bring his works back into print.
Posted in book reviews, books, The Art of Reviewing
Tagged artifact, barthes, book reviews, books, bourgeoisie, capitalism, child soldier, cobra, communism, conservatism, consumerism, cuba, culture, curator, drag queen, economics, fiction, gay, GI Joe, historical society, imperialism, interpretation, LGBT, linguistics, Marxism, museum, non-fiction, paris match, philosophy, politics, pop culture, sarduy, science fiction, semiotics, series, shopping, sontag
A limited-run series where I review three books about the Supreme Court of the United States, exploring its historical and ideological conflicts, and the transformations it wrought upon law and society.
Alan Dershowitz: I’m not a hired gun. I’ve got to feel there’s some moral or constitutional issue at stake.
Claus von Bülow: But I’m absolutely innocent, and my civil liberties have been egregiously violated!
Reversal of Fortune (Barbet Schroeder, 1990)
With every opinion handed down, the Supreme Court not only decides important constitutional matters, but their opinions could damage the prestige and mythology so ferociously treasured. Recent decades have seen the Court adopt a relationship to the other branches of government that remains isolated and insular. Unlike the media feeding frenzy associated with the President and the Congress, the Supreme Court still forbids TV cameras during oral arguments. The media ban gives the Court a difference from the other branches, at once aloof and antiquated.
The Court desires to keep their distance from the other branches and to avoid breaches in propriety. At least that’s what the dominant institutional mythology would have one believe. Despite the nine justices lacking party affiliation on their nameplates, it is a highly political position. Many Supreme Court justices came from other branches of government or ascended the judicial hierarchy from lower courts. Once on the Supreme Court the justices don’t need to worry about re-election, but that only reinforces the new nominee’s potential danger and importance.
The Court didn’t always have this insular relationship. The day after his nomination to the Supreme Court, Robert Jackson joined FDR’s regular poker games. In these decades, the relationship between the Court and the Presidency became collegial. (Except for the explosive conflict of FDR’s “court-packing plan” that turned into a fiasco, the Court and FDR remained on amicable terms.) Even as late as the Sixties, Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas regularly advised President Lyndon Johnson. Forced off the bench because of an investigation into the improper use of his influence, Abe Fortas’s seat left an opening for Nixon to appoint a conservative justice.
During the Forties, Tommy Corcoran, the famous New Dealer and lobbyist, got thrown out of the Supreme Court building for alleged indiscretions. These involved his lobbying on behalf of his clients to justices like Black and Douglas. While Douglas and Corcoran had a close friendship, Douglas would not stand for the lobbying. If actions like Corcoran’s were leaked to the press, Douglas and others might have to recuse themselves from the case. And if there weren’t enough justices to hear the case, the case would be either dismissed or sent back to the lower courts.
Prior to the Woodward’s and Armstrong’s Brethren, the Supreme Court preserved the façade of the apolitical. Only two major breaches of Court etiquette occurred prior to the 1979 bestseller. On the first occasion was in 1937, Hugo Black made a radio address denying he was a bigot but affirming his membership and resignation from the Ku Klux Klan.
The second occasion was in 1946 by Robert Jackson, in a heated pique when he was passed over for the Chief Justice post and his spat with Justice Hugo Black. Justice Jackson sent public cables to the Congressional Judiciary Committees exposing Justice Black’s potential conflict of interest in a mining case. Newspapers published the cables that exposed the politicking, bargaining, and ideological grudge matches that took place behind the velvet curtain. While the Supreme Court is a rare government institution that cultivates intellect and interpretation, there are still countless opportunities for alliance-building and ideological clashes. The Court may be removed from the cash-hemorrhaging insults to intelligence one endures during regularly scheduled political campaigns, but that doesn’t mean the Court isn’t an ideological battleground every bit as important as a Presidential debate or town hall meeting.
Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
What drove Justice Potter Stewart to Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong was Chief Justice Warren Burger’s inept and devious manipulations of Court protocol. After the Supreme Court grants a writ of certiorari (“granting cert” is the shorthand), the Court then hears oral argument. Following oral argument, then Court then votes and then writes opinions. Granting cert means the case has constitutional merit and the potential to overturn precedent. Once oral argument is heard, the Justices vote and then speak, with the senior Justice in the majority going first. Cases can have multiple votes and the real action occurs with Justices forming alliances and majority-building, every bit as important and political as that of the legislature. But the Court acts like a Microscopic Legislature, with each side battling to get the necessary five votes.
Pimpin’ ain’t easy.
(Congress faces a more challenging prospect with 100 Senators, 535 Representatives, numerous interest groups, lobbyists, and other personalities working and undermining each other to craft a legislature best tailored to their own self-interests. While Congress votes to best please its represented constituency, the Court works for the entire nation.)
Court protocol has the Justice in the majority, not the Chief Justice; assign the opinion to another Justice to write. Chief Justice Burger’s manipulations attempted to put him in the majority and to write the opinion himself. Part of this was based on Burger’s desire to create his personal judicial legacy. Among the clerks of the Court, Burger’s dingbat Machiavellianism had them asking, “Is Burger evil or just stupid?” In one particular case, Burger voted in the affirmative and in the negative multiple times, simply to get into the majority. Burger seemed less about “sticking to one’s guns”, ideologically speaking, than acting like an attention hog. The Brethren excels when it depicts these heated arguments in conference.
During the campaigns of 1940 and 1944, William O. Douglas made no secret of “campaigning from the bench,” writing opinions that would please his liberal-libertarian constituency and also appeal to FDR in the hopes of securing the VP spot. It wasn’t until the ascent of the Missouri haberdasher and his machine-style political campaigning, that Douglas put his presidential ambitions to rest.
Once the older justices began resigning and he could appoint his New Dealer allies to the bench, FDR possessed the rare privilege of nominating nearly the entire Court. In most cases, the nomination and appointment went smoothly, unlike the televised ideological litmus tests of today. But FDR did not always have an effortless time getting his legislation passed. In the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack and pro-war/anti-Asian hysteria, one case came to the attention of the Court. The story of that case reveals how the Court refused to muscle under Presidential pressure and reassert its autonomy from the Executive Branch.
Will the Supreme Court support the President or will it show backbone?
Posted in book reviews, books, Mondays with the Supremes
Tagged book reviews, books, cert, Hugo Black, internment, KKK, non-fiction, politics, prometheus, protocol, Robert Jackson, SCOTUS, series, Supreme Court, US, US history
From the Onion.
A limited-run series where I review three books about the Supreme Court of the United States, exploring its historical and ideological conflicts, and the transformations it wrought upon law and society.
The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court, by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong (1979)
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, by Jeffrey Toobin (2007)
Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices, by Noah Feldman (2010)
I. INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF THE SUPREME COURT
The Supreme Court of the United States is one of several institutions in our country that radiates majesty, secrecy, and opacity. Like the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, it is shrouded in secrecy, periodically issuing decisions with great import to the daily lives of American citizens. It also possess similarities to the Federal Reserve with a group of unelected individuals commanding great power. Furthermore, Supreme Court Justices, like Federal Reserve Governors, have a tendency to speak in opaque terminology. Discovering the importance of a Supreme Court decision sometimes involves digging through mountains of legalese and knowledge of the case’s labyrinthine history up the ladder of the US Justice system.
Supreme Court Justices possess a federal position unlike any other. While Federal Reserve Chairmen must be re-appointed, once one is on the Supreme Court, one is given a lifetime appointment. It makes it a hotly contested position, coupled with the small number of seats on the Supreme Court (only nine, despite the best efforts of FDR). Appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, the average voter has little direct influence in the process. In the past, the voter had even less, since US Senators were not elected via direct election. (The 17th Amendment, passed in 1913, worked to change the deliberative, glacial, and otherwise necrotic institution.)
These three books under review, The Brethren, by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, The Nine, by Jeffrey Toobin, and Scorpions, by Noah Feldman, work to remove the secretive veil that covers the Supreme Court. Each book attempts to reveal to readers a “secret history.” (Similar secret histories have included James Bamford’s series of investigative works on the National Security Agency and William Greider’s exploration of the inner workings of the Federal Reserve. One can also add the vast, albeit dubious, literature associated with secret societies, and the equally vast literature associated with detailing the histories of the world’s numerous intelligence agencies.)
The books refract off each other in fascinating ways. One can read punctuated biographies of specific justices. In The Brethren, President Nixon appoints William Rehnquist to the Supreme Court from his previous position in the Justice Department. The Nine follows his ascent to Chief Justice following his appointment by President Reagan. Scorpions explores how Rehnquist, working as a clerk for Justice Robert Jackson, wrote a memorandum affirming Plessy v Ferguson’s segregationist policies. The memorandum would come back to haunt Rehnquist during both confirmation hearings. Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas were both appointed by FDR (as recounted in Scorpions) shuffle off the mortal coin in The Brethren in its detailing of the Court during the Nixon and Ford years.
The Brethren by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong was the first expose of the inner workings of the Supreme Court. The book covers the Supreme Court terms from 1968 to 1975. Justice Potter Stewart’s dissatisfaction with Chief Justice Warren Burger’s shenanigans prompted the authors to interview justices, clerks, and other personnel working with the highest court. On the surface, one would assume the book is a tawdry exposé, but in actuality, Woodward and Armstrong wrote a limited-scope institutional investigation, exploring the personalities, protocol, and positioning that made the Supreme Court a uniquely American civic organization. One reads about the factions, horse-trading, and decision writing. The intellectual and ideological components that go into the construction of the finalized Supreme Court decision make for fascinating reading. Instead of wrangling the necessary votes in Congress, one has to contend with only nine votes, or, at minimum, five votes in order to create a judicial majority and possibly overturn legislation.
The Brethren’s major accomplishment involved making the reader see the Supreme Court as simply another American civic institution. The Court is an institution with its rivalries and it reaches decisions every bit as partisan and shady as those made in Congress or the Oval Office. Woodward and Armstrong helped de-mythologize an institution deadly serious about preserving its autonomy, prestige, and authority, even if that involves wrapping itself in quasi-religious pomp and circumstance.
If one deigns to call him or herself an “informed voter,” it helps to know what our alleged representatives are doing, especially at the highest echelons of power, and how the power structure operates. Responsible citizenship involves more than parroting back empty slogans befitting a bumper sticker and preening about with an “I Voted” sticker like you just won the Congressional Medal of Honor. The fact that voters cannot elect Supreme Court justices should prompt more people to read books relating the zenith of the Judicial Branch.
Posted in book reviews, books, Mondays with the Supremes
Tagged Armstrong, book reviews, books, capitalism, catholicism, communism, culture, economics, FDR, Feldman, hippies, hollywood, Hugo Black, law, non-fiction, philosophy, politics, pop culture, Rehnquist, religion, SCOTUS, series, Supreme Court, Toobin, William O Douglas, Woodward
Posted in book reviews, books, CCLAP Fridays
Tagged architecture, book reviews, books, communism, culture, economics, maximalism, non-fiction, photography, politics, pop culture, science fiction, Soviet Union, Taschen, USSR
The first coins, the first hamburger, the first military motor vehicle. These are but a sampling of Robertson’s Book of Firsts. Researched and compiled by Patrick Robertson as a culmination of a lifelong passion, the book aims to chronicle not invention, but innovation. This means a look at social and technological development and some surprising entries. Robertson approaches this collection of firsts from a unique position. A former government employee and a former chairman of the Ephemera Society, he also owns the largest private collection of vintage magazines in Britain. Firsts are ephemeral, since once a first is achieved, social and technological change will prompt more firsts to occur. Just look at the developments of the cell phone and the demographic make-up of the United States Supreme Court.
The alphabetically arranged articles vary in length. For example, the article on blood transfusion covers nearly two full pages. To break it down, there is the first blood transfusion done on June 12, 1667 by Jean-Baptiste Denys, the personal physician to Louis XIV, for “a boy of fifteen suffering from a severe fever.” The first U.S. blood transfusion took place in 1795 by Dr. Philip Physick. The first panel of blood donors occurred in 1921, being four volunteers “from the Camberwell Division of the London Branch of the British Red Cross Society.” The Red Cross established the first blood donor panel in the United States in August 1937 in Augusta, Georgia. In 1931 the first blood bank was established by Prof. Sergei Yudin “at the Sklifosovsky Institute, Moscow’s central emergency service hospital,” but Bernard Fantus “coined the term” in 1937 for Cook County Hospital’s centralized blood storage depot. Finally, the first pre-natal blood transfusion was performed by Prof. George Green and Sir William Liley in Auckland, New Zealand on September 20, 1963.
The Book of Firsts is chock-full of such information. The first antique automobile movement happened on July 12, 1925, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Allgemeiner Schnaufer-Club (“Tin Lizzy Club”) in Munich, Germany. The year 1623 saw the first publication of a hymn book containing original matter by George Wither, although the first hymn book in a vernacular tongue was “published in Prague by Severin for the Hussites of Bohemia on 13 January 1501.” The first naval vessels to be equipped with radio-telephone apparatus were the USS Virginia and the USS Connecticut in 1907. The lists go on and on, from the first legal abortion to the first women’s track and field events.
Whether reading a single entry with all developments chronicled or searching for a specific “first,” The Book of Firsts will captivate and infuriate readers. Expect to have your pre-conceptions about certain “firsts” refuted. As with any book of this kind, it is subject to the winds of change. The entry on gay marriage has quickly become obsolete, the last sub-entry on U.S. gay marriage ending with the passage of Proposition 8. But that is hardly a demerit in terms of the sheer wealth of information and entertaining factoids one can harvest from this book, whether casually browsing the pages or capturing a “first” for research purposes. This is a good book to have on the bookshelf next to the dictionary, thesaurus, Schott’s Miscellany, and the Meaning of Tingo.
Posted in book reviews, books, cars, miscellaneous
Tagged book reviews, books, culture, economics, firsts, non-fiction, politics, pop culture
I’m proud to a new feature, CCLaP Fridays. I recently became involved as a writer for the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. Every other Friday I will post on their website, alternating between general book reviews and themed reviews.
The general reviews will focus on fiction and non-fiction books published in the last 24 months. My themed reviews focus on the question, “What does it mean to be human?” I will be looking at attempts to answer that question through books, TV shows, movies, and role-playing games. Everything from Warhammer 40K’s Space Marines, Iain Banks’s Culture, Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy, and a Jim Thompson hard-boiled novel will be analyzed. (This will dovetail nicely into my more in-depth analyses of Warhammer 40K and Battlestar Galactica/Caprica on Coffee is for Closers.)
It will be a unique privilege to write for CCLaP, since I’ve been an avid reader of their reviews and essays for years.
As always, I will post notifications on this blog to let you know when my reviews and essays appear.
Posted in book reviews, CCLAP Fridays, film, The Internet, TV, Warhammer 40K
Tagged book reviews, books, culture, fantasy, fiction, film, non-fiction, pop culture, RPG, science fiction, series, TV, UK, UK fiction, warhammer 40K
What inspired you to write The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Super Girl?
I was working on a paper in graduate school when I started reading a pair of books called The Steel Drug and Cocaine Changes. As the titles suggest, they were about cocaine, and they included case studies of people who had used and abused cocaine. Some of them were very compelling, but due to the nature of the books, the stories were also very fragmentary. With The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl I wanted to flesh out some of the details in a fictionalized forum, to try to come up with a more fully imagined version of the scraps I had read and started to piece together.
Tell us about your blog, Small Press Reviews, and the appeal of reviewing the works of small presses.
I started Small Press Reviews in November of 2007 after sitting in on a discussion of small presses at a local writers’ conference. One of the speakers was an author named Curtis Smith. I bought his book The Species Crown and loved it. Between his talk and the book, I was sold on small presses. Part of the appeal is that I feel like small press readers and writers share a strong sense of community. I had lunch with a small press author named Christian TeBordo a few weeks ago, and though we’d never really met before—aside from running into each other once or twice when we both taught at Temple University—we found that we shared a common language, so to speak, as we dropped names of small presses we really admire like Featherproof and Atticus Books, as well as small press books we both enjoyed like The Universe in Miniature in Miniature by Patrick Somerville. Being part of the small press scene is a little bit like belonging to an exclusive club, but one that’s—ironically, I guess—open to anyone who’s interested in joining. All you need to do is read a few books and join the conversation.
What’s the premise of Don DeLillo, Jean Baudrillard, and the Consumer Conundrum? What is the “Consumer Conundrum” and how is it reflected in the works of DeLillo, an American novelist, and Baudrillard, a French social theorist?
The book basically looks at the problem of consumerism in the western world. Early in his career, Jean Baudrillard wrote a book called The System of Objects in which he argued that humans have surrounded themselves with commodities which no longer serve any real purpose other than to signal status. This observation in itself is nothing new, but Baudrillard’s argument was that by surrounding ourselves with objects, we’ve taken on the status of objects ourselves—that our sense of self-worth is bound up in the constellations of objects we arrange around ourselves as signs of value. This is a bit of an oversimplification of his argument, but the conundrum I talk about in the book is that of figuring out how to overcome the inertia of commodification, how to stop being objects and, instead, become subjects, become human again. Baudrillard offered a lot of commentary on this predicament over the course of his career and eventually decided that it really couldn’t be done. Don DeLillo, on the other hand offers a more hopeful view of our species’ potential to regain its humanity—through art, though language, through doubting the logic of accumulation that surrounds us. It’s been a long time since I wrote that book. I’m a little fuzzy on the details.
Is there a link between capitalism’s need for gain (profits, acquisition, expansion, accumulation) and an addict’s need for increased dosages just “to maintain”? (“Wonder Mom” seemed to touch on this indirectly, albeit from the perspective of a Drug Morality Tale. Audrey’s inevitable crash late in the novel and the global economic cataclysm aren’t too dissimilar. Or am I reading too much into it?)
No, you’re not reading too much into at all! In fact, a part of me always hoped that readers would draw a similar parallel. Look at the publishing industry, for example. John B. Thompson wrote a book a couple of years ago called Merchants of Culture, and in it he talks about the publishing industry’s need to make 10% more money in any given year than they did in the previous year. That’s why you always see a glut of crappy, gimmicky books just before the holiday season. The publishers are gambling that people who don’t generally read might buy these books as gifts, that they’ll be good for a laugh or will look good on a shelf in someone’s house somewhere. Yet another reason, I suppose, to favor small presses over big conglomerates. The same thing, as you note, happens to Audrey as she continues to fall deeper and deeper into her addiction. She’s hollowing out her soul as she strives for that extra 10% that will help her keep her head above water, at least until she needs her next hit. I always had consumerism in mind when I was working on that book.
Between your novels, your blog, and your teaching, what’s your work schedule like? Do you ever feel like one area is being neglected while you tend to another?
Hah! Yes! All the time! I teach five courses with an average enrollment of about twenty students each. On any given weekend, I’m grading between forty and sixty papers. I love teaching, but that much grading really takes a toll. Needless to say, I don’t get much time for writing during the school year, but I do try to squeeze it in here and there. On one hand, I wish I had more time to write, but I also wouldn’t want to give up teaching. Not just because of the steady paycheck and benefits, but because I really feel like I come alive in front of a classroom—sharing ideas with students, helping them learn to express their ideas and participate in the wider dialogue not just of academia but of culture at large. Even so, I frequently wish I had more time to write. And blogging? I liken it to punk rock. When I’m working on a novel or an essay or a short story, I’m obsessing over craft and getting the content and form of the piece just right, like Brian Wilson taking months to record “Good Vibrations.” But with blogging, it’s more like the Ramones recording their first album in a day. Get it done, and get it out there. Share it with the world, warts and all.
What projects are you working on these days?
My second novel comes out in May. It’s called The Grievers. I should be getting galley copies this week, so I’ll be proofreading and making notes for any minor changes I want to make before it goes to print. Otherwise, I’m mainly gathering scraps in a notebook and hoping they eventually coalesce into something somewhere down the line.
Who are your favorite authors (novelists and/or academics)?
I like anyone who bridges the gap between “ivory tower” academic discourse and a more down to earth yet intelligent public discourse. There’s a lot in the news lately about the hollowing out of the middle class. I think there’s also been a gutting of the ability to have an intelligent conversation in the United States. At one end, there are academics who speak and write in impenetrable and, frankly, boring prose, and at the other end there’s the bombast and vitriol of the shouting heads on TV and radio, not to mention the histrionics of anyone involved in reality TV. It’s tough for regular people like you and me to have a thoughtful, intelligent, public conversation about the arts or culture or even politics anymore, but it is possible. Authors like Jonathan Lethem and Steve Almond do it in their nonfiction, and a lot of bloggers are doing it, too. Anyone who raises the bar on public discourse is okay in my book.
But if you’re looking for names, I love pretty much everything by Kurt Vonnegut. I was also on a George Saunders kick for a while, hot on the heels of a Chuck Palahniuk kick, a Neil Gaiman kick, and my perennial Philip K. Dick kick. Over the summer, I read Chistopher Moore’s Fool and told all of my friends to read it. More recently, I’ve been reading a lot of short stories. Robin Black’s If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This is amazing, and I really enjoyed Steve Almond’s God Bless America. I also liked Don DeLillo’s The Angel Esmerelda. If I’m not teaching or writing, I’m reading.
Posted in books, Interviews, Permanent Press
Tagged authors, books, capitalism, culture, drugs, economics, fiction, interviews, non-fiction, philosophy, politics, pop culture, publishing, small presses, war on drugs
