This week at CCLaP, I investigate Gynecocracy, by Viscount Ladywood for the NSFW Files. In the novel, a wayward aristocratic man gets a stern lesson in forced feminization and the proper wearing of a corset. Who knew the Victorian era was so naughty?
Today at CCLaP, I introduce my new essay series for 2013, “The NSFW Files,” which over the rest of this year will investigate the historical and literary worth of erotica through the ages, from ancient Rome to modern times.
This week at CCLaP I review Mania! by Ronald KL Collins and David M. Skover, which looks at the history of the Beat Generation through the lens of free speech.
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 Supreme Court Building opened in 1935, originally designed by Minnesota-based architect Cass Gilbert. From 1860 to 1935, the Supreme Court occupied what was known as the “Old Senate Chamber.” Prior to this, the Supreme Court moved in location several times. It took the advocacy of former President and Supreme Court Chief Justice William Howard Taft for Congress to approve a plan for a separate building for the Supreme Court. While Taft is little known to most Americans, except in satires and parodies that point out his rather spherical appearance, the Supreme Court Building stands as his legacy.
Besides the Supreme Court Building, Cass Gilbert also designed the Minnesota Capitol and the Woolworth Building, one of the oldest skyscrapers in the nation. Jeffrey Toobin, in his book, The Nine, details how the Supreme Court Building exemplified the grandeur and egalitarian nature of The Law. Its neoclassical design makes material the abstract concepts argued and interpreted by the justices, clerks, solicitors general, and lawyers who make their way before the highest court in the land. The steps emphasize that everyone who enter enter the same way. All are equal before the Law. Cass Gilbert’s steps are the 14th amendment made real. America has an unhealthy fondness for political dynasties, but one can be relieved that we don’t create special legislative measures insuring the privileges of the titled. There is no aristocracy in America, although there is plutocracy, oligarchy, and mobocracy aplenty, enough to raise the hackles of those Right and Left.
The Court interprets what the Law is. This is where things can get dicey, since Law, as evidenced by Supreme Court decisions, the decisions of lesser courts, legislation, and common cultural practice, has become an ever-changing thing. Is the Law:
A permanent set of standards and practices, unalterable by cultural change and the march of time?
A malleable set of dicta and guidelines to be changed when the needs arise or when popular opinion demands?
If only things were that easy. The drama and danger imbued with the task of interpreting the Law belies the fact that it is impossible to distill the Law into an either/or proposition. In addition, the nine justices must interpret the Law for all. This is why Scalia and Thomas sit on the sidelines, penning extremist opinions, nostalgic for a theocratic capitalist utopia, swinging words with the futility of King Lear fighting the sea.
The Supreme Court is like a legislative body in microcosm. Instead of 535 Congressional Representatives and 100 Senators, there are only nine justices. Of late, the Court has been wracked by a series of 5-4 decisions. The last unanimous decision of import was Nixon v US. Unlike Brown, Nixon involved preserving institutional autonomy against an executive power grab. It wasn’t necessarily that Nixon would have attained dictatorial powers like the tinpot pro-US dictators we sponsored throughout the Cold War and after, although Nixon was no slouch, and it could have been possible. Nixon v US would have made the Court irrelevant and it would have ceded its accumulated institutional prestige earned from Marbury v Madison, the decision that established the Court’s power of judicial review. (With almost pointillist precision, The Brethren sheds light on the debates and interpretive frameworks surrounding Nixon v US. It broadens the picture established by All the President’s Men. One can also add to Years of Upheaval by Henry Kissinger to see Watergate from the foreign policy perspective.)
We return again to Cass Gilbert’s steps, this time blooded by the War on Terror and the very real threat to the buildings of the District of Columbia. As the Supreme Court website says on its “Plan Your Visit” page: “Visitors may enter the building from the Plaza doors located on each side of the main steps.”
Built and opened during the crucible of the Great Depression, the Supreme Court Building remains, albeit with new security measures. Cass Gilbert’s steps now lack the metaphorical and physical embodiment of egalitarianism and majesty. But, in its own way, the Supreme Court Building has us – citizens, voters, tourists – contemplate the meaning of the Law. For decades, the route of entry to the Supreme Court Building remained unchanged. Now recent events has changed the equation. Things change, and by turns, so the Law must also change. For the better or for the worse? As the old chestnut goes, “The only constant is change.” While that is true on a superficial level and bespeaks a certain bumper sticker logic, what does that mean in real terms? Today the Big Issues involve gay marriage, health care reform, wifi, and international terrorism. The Supreme Court interprets the Law with the real consequences in mind, at least in theory, in practice it doesn’t usually end up so nice and neat.
While the Supreme Court may seem like a distant star populated by intellectual obscurantists in lifetime appointments, it is reassuring that the Court members are both in touch and wildly out of touch with popular opinion. Why is this a good thing? Despite the measures taken to secure appointments, we, as citizens, do have a degree of control, however slight and oblique, in judicial selection. The President nominates the candidate and the Senate Judiciary Committee can consent to that nomination, but we elect both of them. (Whether our candidate actually wins is another kettle of fish.) Supreme Court vacancies don’t come along very often, but when they do, it is of especial importance to citizens who value their hard-fought freedoms.
The hard-fought nature of these aforementioned freedoms relies on how these nine above-average jurists interpret the Law. The Court’s insulation from public opinion can be a good thing. Think of desegregation and popular opinion. Only long after Brown v Board did a majority of Americans find desegregation acceptable. On the other hand, the United States is creeping ever closer to universal acceptance of gay marriage. Unfortunately, the Court has several conservatives and ultraconservatives who put their archaic and ossified moral outlook ahead of marital desegregation. (Alas, they don’t see it in those terms.) But the Court can change. Who knows, perhaps a future President will nominate an openly gay Supreme Court nominee (or two) to the bench. The last election cycle brought forth Tammy Baldwin, an openly gay member of the Senate, a nice counterbalance to the closet-inhabiting senators seated on the opposite side of the aisle.
The Law will adapt to meet the needs of modern society, but if history is any indication, the Law will be dragged kicking and screaming as society attempts to lurch forward, held back by antiquated laws of no relevance. The occupants of the nine seats in Cass Gilbert’s neoclassical temple will either let freedom expand or confine it to the few. But before any of this change can happen, it has to make it to Cass Gilbert’s steps.
***NOTE: Mondays with the Supremes will continue in a more irregular fashion following these nine initial posts. I will post reviews on books pertaining to the Supreme Court.***
Karl Wolff begins 2013 reviewing Seth Kaufman’s novel “The King of Pain,” about a reality TV producer lodged beneath his giant home entertainment system, his predicament complicated by reading a short story collection about prisons written by someone named Seth Kaufman.
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 body of doctrine or thought that guides an individual, social movement, institution, or group.
such a body forming a political or social program, along with the devices for putting it into operation.
theorizing of a visionary or impractical nature.
the study of the nature and origin of ideas.Category: Philosphy
a philosophical system that derives ideas exclusively from sensation.Category: Philosphy
Origin of ideology: 1790–1800; cf. F idéologie
Random House Webster’s College Dictionary
The Federalist Society: the Resurgence of the Judicial Conservatism
In the long and storied history of the United States, conservatism suffered two major blows in modern times. The first was the Great Depression and President Herbert Hoover’s intransigence. The Republican president believing that the market would right itself without heavy-handed government meddling. Hoover’s miscalculation created the groundswell for the Democratic Party’s decades long domination of the executive and legislative branches. The second major blow was the constellation of scandals known as Watergate. Whereas Hoover’s failure to act discredited the economic foundation of conservatism (laissez faire capitalism), Watergate exposed a corruption and moral sickness at the epicenter of the executive branch. The constitutional crisis and Nixon’s authoritarian paranoia made the party of Law and Order seem comically hypocritical. (Understandably, there are multiple causes and multiple interpretations one can find in explaining both the Great Depression and Watergate. But the point of this essay is to underscore how the ordinary American citizen comprehended these crises.) Jeffrey Toobin’s The Nine highlights the conservative comeback and how a grassroots movement worked towards creating a comprehensive plan to take back the judiciary. In addition, the conservative comeback can be further understood by the in-depth investigation of the Burger Court and its ideological turf battles as chronicled in The Brethren.
The groundwork for the conservative comeback occurred with the Federalist Society, a conservative and libertarian think tank devoted to judicial issues. Toobin illustrates the agendas of the Right and Left in very practical terms. In 1982 the Federalist Society galvanized young conservatives into action, while the Left became preoccupied with Comparative Legal Studies. The difference is striking. Reeling from the double-punch of a discredited economic system and the morally questionable actions of President Nixon, conservatives sought one thing: power. As opposed to the armchair discussions and morally self-righteous complacency of Comparative Legal Studies, the Right is to be commended for its program and its call to action. Like it or not, results only occur when power is attained, be in the legislature, the Oval Office, or the judge’s bench. One can have a comprehensive ideological outlook and sensible solutions to social problems, but if one isn’t connected to those with power, then it is rather pointless. One can have demonstrations and petitions and eloquent public speeches, but if one can’t change the laws one is protesting, what are you doing out there?
The clarion call of overturning Roe and the Federalist Society’s agenda of limited government created a formidable opposition to the entrenched Democratic establishment. Following the disastrous presidency of Jimmy Carter, the Age of Reagan allowed for a full-on assault of political liberalism in both economic and social spheres. In terms of the public’s imagination, Reagan pushed back against the onslaught of FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” turned into “Government is the problem not the solution.”
The Brethren sums up the conservative position in this brief description of Justice Rehnquist:
And they [the liberals on the Court] when Rehnquist began promptly to live up to his advance billing as a solid conservative vote, siding invariably with the prosecution in criminal cases, with businesses in antitrust cases, with employers in labor cases and with the government in speech cases.
Through Nixon, Ford, and Reagan presidencies, the Right had created a political atmosphere conducive to nominating conservatives to the judiciary. Once ensconced on these benches, it provided future opportunities for nominations and promotions. The Federal judiciary became a minefield for any case involving liberal causes.
MARTIN: It’s a revolution in Washington, Joe. We have a new agenda and finally a real leader. They got back the Senate but we have the courts. By the nineties the Supreme Court will be block-solid Republican appointees, and the Federal bench – Republican judges like land mines, everywhere, everywhere they turn. Affirmative action? Take it to court. Boom! Land mine. And we’ll get our way on just about everything: abortion, defense, Central America, family values, a live investment culture. We have the White House locked till the year 2000. And beyond. A permanent fix on the Oval Office? It’s possible. By ’92 we’ll have the Senate back, and in ten years the South is going to give us the House. It’s really the end of Liberalism. The end of New Deal Socialism. The end of ipso facto secular humanism. The dawning of a genuine American political personality. Modeled on Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Angels in America: Millennium Approaches Tony Kushner
And the key to landing conservative justices in these positions was the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Dune Buggy Driver: Where’s the damn race? Duke: Beats me. We’re just good patriotic Americans like yourself. Dune Buggy Driver: What outfit you guys with? Duke: The sporting press. We’re friendlies. Hired geeks.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998, Terry Gilliam)
The Senate Judiciary Committee: Fulcrum of Democracy
There are few places in our government where all three branches converge. One of them is the Senate Judiciary Committee. It’s importance cannot be underestimated. The committee plays the role of advise and consent on the President’s nominees for judicial posts, most importantly those of the Supreme Court. It is the greatest manifestation of checks and balances between branches. The importance can be seen in what is at stake for all involved. For the President, successfully nominating a candidate for Supreme Court will allow the President to have influence when his or her term or terms is up. (One can see this is the liberal legacy of FDR’s appointees.) For the Senate, it is a chance to wield its power. They are a guaranteed stopgap against executive overreach. The Senate fought back when FDR pursued his ill-fated Court Packing scheme. Added to this political calculus is the nature of the Supreme Court position itself. First, these are lifetime appointments. (Unlike, say, the Federal Reserve Chairman who needs to be appointed and re-elected to the position.) The lifetime appointment is coupled with the microscopic nature of the Supreme Court. Unlike the 535 Representatives in Congress and the 100 in the Senate, there are only nine Supreme Court justices. Congressional appearance fluctuates with the attitude of the electorate. The Supreme Court is (allegedly) immune from the winds of public opinion and popular electioneering. The Nine chronicles the longest period without a change in the Supreme Court’s make-up (1994 – 2005).
In recent years, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings for Supreme Court nominees have been televised, turning the TV-watching populace into amateur Court watchers. Newspapers, magazines, and more recently the Internet become abuzz with speculation, hysteria, and analysis. Nominees are confirmed, others denied. Over the past decades, the hearings have taken on a different pallor. Instead of denying nominees for being too conservative, nominees have been denied for not being conservative enough. Hence, the Senate Judiciary Committee becomes a kind of ideological litmus test. The slow transition from a liberal-leaning Supreme Court to a more conservative-leaning Supreme Court has taken decades. This has also changed the mindset of the electorate, the Congress, and politicians. The events of 9/11 cemented a rightward tilt in the populace, at least until the economic meltdown of 2009, again putting the free market fundamentalists on notice.
Toobin, to his credit, illustrates the importance of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the rightward tilt of the judiciary throughout the Seventies and Eighties. But he seems to put to much emphasis on ideology alone. Because the Supreme Court is such a small government body, demographics also plays a key role. The Supreme Court will always be a body given to firsts. Amidst the recently confirmed nominees, the Supreme Court has seen its first female Hispanic justice. And now the Supreme Court has a majority of Catholic justices. Now there are six, instead of three. This has given the secular-minded pause. Alas, anti-Catholic hysteria has followed these nominations, especially in more extremist circles.
The Court’s nominal Catholicism should not be caricatured. While it is too early to tell what the judicial philosophy of the newer Catholic appointees will be like, one shouldn’t characterize the Catholic justices as a religious monolith. There are left-leaning Catholics (Sotomayor) and right-leaning (Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, Kennedy). So let’s play the demographics game: Scalia, Thomas, and Alito form a solid conservative bloc. Sotomayor, Kagan, and Ginsburg are women. Kagan, Ginsburg, and Breyer are Jewish. And Kennedy, Breyer, and Souter are reliable swing votes. The best way to comprehend the votes of the Court is to consider not just ideology, but the race, sex, and religion of the nine justices.
Affirmative action was designed to keep women and minorities in competition with each other to distract us while white dudes inject AIDS into our chicken nuggets.
Tracy Jordan, 30 Rock (Pilot episode)
The Trouble with Clarence Thomas: the Contradictions of Modern Conservatism
Like it or not, Justice Clarence Thomas may be the most fascinating personality on the Court. Catholic, African-American, Southern, ultraconservative, and a bit of a porn aficionado. His complex profile is on par with the late Reverend Peter J. Gomes, a gay black Republican Baptist who was Harvard’s Dean of Divinity. Gomes and Thomas represent challenging personalities, one not easy to wrap the mind around. Thomas is erudite, passionate, an ideological firebrand, an extremist, and, most recently, totally silent on the bench.
Nominated by President George H. W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate to replace the vacant seat of Justice Thurgood Marshall, Thomas appeared as the polar opposite of Marshall. Ironically, it is these ultraconservative values that make him such a contradictory figure. Thomas adamantly opposes affirmative action, yet his entire career has been based on its tenets. A devout Roman Catholic and crusader for family values, his nomination was one of the most controversial in decades. Amidst allegations of sexual harassment and of renting porn videos, his nomination was confirmed. Added to this rather curious interpretation and practice of Catholicism, he is a die-hard advocate of free market capitalism. In addition, in speaking engagements, Thomas has repeatedly mentioned his disgust at “the elites,” the wonderful catch-all term beloved to Right and Left. It is ironic, since Thomas, a Supreme Court Justice, is a member of one of the most elite institutions in the United States government. It seems his high position and ideological extremism has made him immune to such obvious ironies. Toobin pointed out how Thomas would have his clerks watch The Fountainhead, the film based on the “philosophy” of atheist Ayn Rand.
While Thomas and Scalia are darlings to the Right, their ideological extremism makes them only so useful in the decision-making process of the Court. In the operations of the Court, strong decisions happen when there is a consensus (Brown v Board, Nixon v U.S.). Divided opinions are more contentious (Roe v Wade, Bush v Gore). In the end, an agenda must be taken: remain faithful to one’s ideological base or get things done. Chief Justice Roberts has now received the ire of the Tea Party because of his consensus-building activities on the bench. But in the end, the Supreme Court, like all political entities, derives its prestige not from passing arbitrary ideological purity tests, but from getting results. The words of the fictionalized Roy Cohn seem apt, “You want to be Nice, or you want to be Effective? Make the law, or subject to it. Choose.”
Ideology provides a comprehensive philosophical framework for political action and social change, but without those in power getting their hands dirty it remains useless, a bauble, a hobby, a passing fancy.
This week for my penultimate entry in the On Being Human series I examine “Nekropolis” by Maureen McHugh, a novel about an artificial being called a harni and Hariba, a woman who has been “jessed” into subservience.
Because I read a many books here at the Driftless Area Review, I can’t hope to give them all a thorough long-form review. Reviews in Brief are short-form reviews that offer a concentrated dose of information.
One doesn’t have to walk very far to see the impact of the shapeshifter on popular culture. As the last installment of the Twilight movie series lumbers through cinemas nationwide, it is important to take a step back from the marketing onslaught and Robert Pattison-induced hysterics. Werewolves and Other Shapeshifters in Popular Culture, by Kimberley McMahon-Coleman and Roslyn Weaver, approach the material through thematic analyses. The pair of Australian academics investigate how things like marriage, sexuality, disability, addiction, gender, and spirituality come to play within the novels and films.
The material covered is vast, including the Being Human TV series (UK and US versions), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV series and comics), True Blood (books and TV series), Twilight (films and books), and the Vampire Diaries (TV series and books), among others. Included in the analyses are more obscure Australian novels like Jatta by Jenny Hale. For those oversaturated on the Twilight phenomenon, the “Works Cited” list offers some fascinating recommendations.
Werewolves proves its usefulness in its good timing. Coleman and Weaver investigate the numerous pop cultural pieces here, analyzing how specific treatments reflect attitudes of society at large. For those curious as to why Twilight is so huge with teens these days will find the thematic analyses illuminating. Make no mistake, not every TV series, film, or book covered here would fit into the Great Literature category, but it is a wonderful addition to the growing field of reader reception theory. (Similar reader reception studies have been done with romance novel readership.) The book is a handy resource for those interested in understanding pop cultural trends, but who have neither the time nor inclination to read through the primary source material.
The thematic analysis is an advantage but also a liability in Werewolves. The various rubrics (addiction, gender, etc.) put the primary source material through various lenses, all thought provoking. Conversely, the numerous lenses make the analyses thin and superficial. As a theoretical starting point in exploring shapeshifters in popular culture, the approach delivers. Unfortunately, the weakness shows itself most in the section on spirituality, itself a soft, mushy term acting as a catchall for ritual, religion, and cultic social behaviors. This is seen when McMahon-Coleman and Weaver apply Christian symbolism to the Twilight series. While spiritual and ethical issues like sacrifice, eternity, and morality get explored sufficiently, the analysis of spirituality in Twilight would have benefited immensely from a specific reading attuned to the uniqueness of the Mormon faith. The Mormon concept of blood atonement in a vampire novel series would have proved fascinating, along with the Mormon’s specific understanding of links between Native American and Jewish groups. In Mormon theology, Native Americans are descended from the ancient Jewish population. What does this mean in light of Twilight’s Native American shapeshifter characters, especially since those shapeshifters pass on their powers via hereditary transmission?
Werewolves is a great starting point for those interested in the significance of the shapeshifter in popular culture and how it reflects modern mores.
My mini-review of The Creative Fire, by Brenda Cooper, a book with grand ideas and bland writing.
