I’m about to email my book revision to le agent. I feel all giddy inside, even though I know the manuscript isn’t done-done. But! I get to write something else, at least until I get notes back. YES! Something NEW!
But first: I love this photo. It makes me love my book (or the idea of it)—even if I am SICK of the dang thang.
(PS I had to reblog this from my dog’s Tumblr because I couldn’t reblog my own picture. Thanks, Omar!)
Possible cover for novel #2
There are exactly three countries on Earth that do not provide guarantees for paid maternity leave. Papua New Guinea and Swaziland are two of them. Care to guess the third?
From ThinkProgress, above, we are instructed to conclude from the fact that most countries besides the U.S. guarantee paid maternity leave, that the U.S. is falling short.
This is nonsense.
The U.S. is the only country on the planet — the only one! — with an exclusionary rule that says evidence obtained improperly cannot be used in court. From the fact that no other nation provides such a high degree of procedural protection in criminal trials, should we conclude that the U.S. has made a terrible mistake — or that the rest of the world needs to wise up and see the wisdom of our ways?
Just because you’re at the far end of the bell curve doesn’t automatically mean you’re at the wrong end.
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Matt Welch, on organ replacements:
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Back in a week or so. Got to go make this official.
50: Percent who are black
10.7: Average time, in years, from conviction to exoneration
10,000: Combined time, in years, the 891 exonerated prisoners spent behind bars
1,170: Convicted defendants cleared in 13 “group exonerations” since 1995, following large police-corruption scandals, usually involving planted drugs or guns
Convictions are far more likely to be overturned because they represent non-plea cases, which produce 90% of the sentences.
I don’t believe that is right. A conviction resulting from a plea is still a conviction. There is also a well-established pattern of people pleading guilty to crimes they didn’t commit. Suppose, for example, you’re pulled over and a one-quart zip-lock bag of marijuana is found in your back seat. In reality, you loaned your car to your cousin and genuinely have no idea how it got there. Let’s say you were driving past a school. Maybe the evidence was actually planted and its your word against the cop’s. You haven’t committed a crime. But … the police claim you did. So does the prosecutor. Heck, even your defense attorney is skeptical. And that’s a lot of pot. You could plead to possessing a small amount of pot and maybe get sent through a court diversion program where you’ll have a bit of community service but no jail time. Or they could charge you with trafficking—and if you can’t get the jury to buy your improbable (but true) story, you’re looking at serious time. How lucky do you feel?
When the crimes get more serious, the stakes get higher. You didn’t kill somebody—but it sure as heck looks like you did. If you plead guilty, you can avoid the death penalty. Heck, let’s say you’re already facing time for a felonious assault (which you did do). Maybe you plead guilty.
Many defendants have limited mental capacity. Some are younger. It turns out that if you question a 14 year old for 27 hours straight, you can convince him he killed his sister and then blacked it out. Other people just really want to please authority figures. One gentleman of limited capacity found that his police friends got really happy whenever he confessed to some horrible crime. When prompted, he offered all sorts of details. Sure, some of what he said was inconsistent with the other evidence. But … a confession!
This is my new favorite blog: a 9 year old grades her school lunches.
It’s going viral and will probably be ruined by adults soon.
The Weekly WORD
And then the following week, we’ve got Lev Grossman, a three-fer with Andrew Blackwell, James Higdon, and Lizzie Stark, and a pickling workshop with Kate Payne!
Both Glenn Loury and Ann Althouse have gay sons. And, in this clip, both of them argue that we shouldn’t consider opposition to same-sex marriage to be akin to bigotry. Loury goes a few steps farther, in fact, and claims that a charge of bigotry really amounts to demagogic politics and that people who oppose same-sex marriage on religious or cultural grounds are morally serious and ought not to be dismissed out of hand.
But it’s never entirely clear why Loury and Althouse believe that the views these people espouse are so morally serious or why we ought to refrain from referring to their condemnation of homosexuality as bigotry. From listening to them, my sense is that their argument rests on the presumption that religious people are morally serious and, as such, they reflect on the tenets of their faiths before coming to their conclusions about matters like same-sex marriage.
That’s all well and good, if it’s true. But it doesn’t explain why we shouldn’t think of it as bigotry. That someone believes something to be true and arrives at his or her belief in a serious manner doesn’t exempt him or her from being challenged on that belief, especially when that belief might impact the lives of others.
Let’s go a few steps down the religious path and see what happens. After all, I attend a weekly religious service, I associate with many of my co-religionist, and I observe many of the strictures of my religion in my daily life. And my religion, Judaism, is one that seems to explicitly condemn homosexuality; indeed, it’s the Hebrew Bible to which people turn when they’re looking for a religious justification for their opposition to same-sex marriage and homosexuality more generally (even though the majority of these people don’t pay much attention to any of the other dictates of the Hebrew Bible).
But Jews are divided on the question of same-sex marriage, with most Orthodox authorities opposing it and most Reform authorities supporting it. Conservative authorities are divided, with some in support and some in opposition. The Hebrew Bible says that one should not lie with a man as one lies with a woman … but the Hebrew Bible also says, for example, that the death penalty should be employed as a punishment in hundreds of circumstances (from homicide to children who curse their parents) yet the vast majority of Jewish authorities oppose capital punishment. After much study and debate, religious authorities have found that the text can be read in more ways than one. And that’s why it seems to me that we can take issue with anyone who claims that their religion mandates their opposition to same-sex marriage or their condemnation of homosexuality. The Orthodox, after all, are not agitating for the ability to resume stoning their children.
In other words, Jews have options (and I presume that Christians and Muslims do too). Despite the injunction against homosexuality in Leviticus, there is no need for a Jew to join a congregation that condemns homosexuality or even makes gays and lesbians feel in any way unwelcome. And so, as a Jew, I gravitate toward congregations that are welcoming to gays and lesbians and toward rabbis who speak out in favor of equal rights and equal treatment.
Religions aren’t monolithic; if people really are involved in deep spiritual reflection on the matter of homosexuality, then they will surely be able to find an interpretation of their religious texts that allows for the kind of evolution that President Obama described. This doesn’t mean I’m not serious about practicing Judaism; it means I’m serious about finding a way to reconcile my belief in the teachings of Judaism with my belief that people should be treated equally. But, obviously, one must actually have both of these beliefs.
What do we call someone who either fails to consider the alternative teaching of his or her religion or rejects that teaching because it doesn’t lead to continued condemnation of gays and lesbians, someone — in other words — who doesn’t actually have both a religious belief and a belief in equality?
With apologies to Loury and Althouse, I think I have to call it bigotry.
I’m incredibly excited for one of the University of Nebraska’s most recent political science graduates, Justin Green, who jumped on a plane to Washington two weeks ago and yesterday snagged a fantastic internship with Matt Lewis at the Daily Caller.
Justin started blogging in earnest because it was a requirement for my human rights class last summer, but over the past year he really focused on American politics and staked out a philosophically sophisticated conservative position on a wide variety of issues.
Here’s his first post at the beginning of my class, about a year ago. Here’s the post, from about a week ago, that Matt Lewis referenced in the tweet above.
I’ve been fortunate to encounter many excellent students in my eight years of teaching at the collegiate level. So when new students visit my office to inquire about what political science majors are doing with their degrees, I often talk about those who are working on their PhDs or finishing up their JDs; those who are overseas on Fulbrights; those who are working for NGOs, or in the local or federal government; and those who are Peace Corps volunteers or working somewhere in the U.S. with AmeriCorps.
But I have to say, next year I’m looking forward to telling students about how Justin landed his current job.
Kids:
A few hours ago, I landed in Los Angeles, turned on my phone, and confirmed what you already know. Sony Pictures Television is replacing me as showrunner on Community, with two seasoned fellows that I’m sure are quite nice - actually, I have it on good authority they’re quite nice, because they once created a show and cast my good friend Jeff Davis on it, so how bad can they be.
Why’d Sony want me gone? I can’t answer that because I’ve been in as much contact with them as you have. They literally haven’t called me since the season four pickup, so their reasons for replacing me are clearly none of my business. Community is their property, I only own ten percent of it, and I kind of don’t want to hear what their complaints are because I’m sure it would hurt my feelings even more now that I’d be listening for free.
I do want to correct a couple points of spin, now that I’m free to do so:
The important one is this quote from Bob Greenblatt in which he says he’s sure I’m going to be involved somehow, something like that. That’s a misquote. I think he meant to say he’s sure cookies are yummy, because he’s never called me once in the entire duration of his employment at NBC. He didn’t call me to say he was starting to work there, he didn’t call me to say I was no longer working there and he definitely didn’t call to ask if I was going to be involved. I’m not saying it’s wrong for him to have bigger fish to fry, I’m just saying, NBC is not a credible source of All News Dan Harmon.
You may have read that I am technically “signed on,” by default, to be an executive consulting something or other - which is a relatively standard protective clause for a creator in my position. Guys like me can’t actually just be shot and left in a ditch by Skynet, we’re still allowed to have a title on the things we create and “help out,” like, I guess sharpening pencils and stuff.
However, if I actually chose to go to the office, I wouldn’t have any power there. Nobody would have to do anything I said, ever. I would be “offering” thoughts on other people’s scripts, not allowed to rewrite them, not allowed to ask anyone else to rewrite them, not allowed to say whether a single joke was funny or go near the edit bay, etc. It’s….not really the way the previous episodes got done. I was what you might call a….hands on producer. Are my….periods giving this enough….pointedness? I’m not saying you can’t make a good version of Community without me, but I am definitely saying that you can’t make my version of it unless I have the option of saying “it has to be like this or I quit” roughly 8 times a day.
The same contract also gives me the same salary and title if I spend all day masturbating and playing Prototype 2. And before you ask yourself what you would do in my situation: buy Prototype 2. It’s fucking great.
Because Prototype 2 is great, and because nobody called me, and then started hiring people to run the show, I had my assistant start packing up my office days ago. I’m sorry. I’m not saying seasons 1, 2 and 3 were my definition of perfect television, I’m just saying that whatever they’re going to do for season 4, they’re aiming to do without my help. So do not believe anyone that tells you on Monday that I quit or diminished my role so I could spend more time with my loved ones, or that I negotiated and we couldn’t come to an agreement, etc. It couldn’t be less true because, just to make this clear, literally nobody called me. Also don’t believe anyone that says I have sex with animals. And if there’s a photo of me doing it with an animal - I’m not saying one exists, I’m just saying, if one surfaces - it’s a fake. Look at the shadow. Why would it be in front of the giraffe if the sun is behind the jeep?
Where was I? Oh yeah. I’m not running Community for season 4. They replaced me. Them’s the facts.
When I was a kid, sometimes I’d run home to Mommy with a bloody nose and say, “Mom, my friends beat me up,” and my Mom would say “well then they’re not worth having as friends, are they?” At the time, I figured she was just trying to put a postive spin on having birthed an unpopular pussy. But this is, after all, the same lady that bought me my first typewriter. Then later, a Commodore 64. And later, a 300 baud modem for it. Through which I met new friends that did like me much, much more.
I’m 39, now. The friends my Mom warned me about are bigger now, and older, bloodying my nose with old world numbers, and old world tactics, like, oh, I don’t know, sending out press releases to TV Guide at 7pm on a Friday.
But my Commodore 64 is mobile now, like yours, and the modems are invisible, and the internet is the air all around us. And the good friends, the real friends, are finding each other, and connecting with each other, and my Mom is turning out to be more right than ever.
Ah, shit, I still haven’t called my fucking Mom.
Mom, Happy Mother’s Day. I got fired.
Yes, Mom. AGAIN.
