BLEG: Can anyone recommend a good, student-friendly edition of The Merchant of Venice?

Also, if any piece of literature comes to mind when you think "law and justice," do please pass it along via comments or email.

LINK: On a less cynical note, Norm has a good appreciation of Primo Levi. Levi was certainly an astute observer, though much excellent writing came from those who survived that experience: Jean Améry, Charlotte Delbo, Viktor Frankl, Simon Wiesenthal, etc. Though Levi's life story is a tragic one, I think there's something in that collection of people--especially Frankl and Wiesenthal--that defeats any simple thesis about what the experience meant. From this, hope, however narrow and limited in scope, and also Arendt's motivation in ending The Origins of Totalitarianism by quoting Augustine: initium ut esset homo creatus est.

Alex Massie, whose instincts (since usually cynical) are usually spot-on, seems off here:

I don't trust the St Barack stuff either, but there's no point in doubting that Obama has something his rivals don't. There's a clarity that comes to the Democratic race when one views it from a distance (in this instance, the best part of 4,000 miles). Yes Obama is inexperienced, yes a good deal of the talk about how he would unite the country is wishful thinking, yes there are times when he seems a little too keen to bathe in the symbolism of his campaign and yes, god knows how he would actually do as President. But all of these concerns - perfectly legitimate though they may be - seem dwarfed by a single, simple truth: for the first time in American history there is the prospect of voting for a black candidate who actually has a reasonable chance to win. And we're talking about his healthcare plan? Wood and tress, folk.

I should clarify: as analysis, I suspect he's entirely right. As political reality, this drives me crazy. Voting for Obama, on this model, is like giving the Best Actor Oscar to Denzel Washington. At the time, his winning had less to do with merit--though he may well have merited it--than a combined apology for overlooking those in the past who may have deserved to win alongside Hollywood's willingness to think as well of itself as it durst: look at how far we've come!

The conservative critique of racial preferences is built around the idea that race doesn't, shouldn't, actually matter. To pull something up from the archives (foul language ahead):

"If Sept. 11 showed us anything, it's that we're all Americans together, and our black friends are just as excellent at being overprivileged celebrity f***wads as anybody else."
-From Salon.com's Oscars article

So by all means, America, lets us pretend-to-not-make-a-big-deal-about-race-while-making-a-big-deal-out-of-it, and transcend it by noting and appreciating how awesome we are because we're finally going to transcend race.

Also:

There is still something hubristic about the idea that his campaign marks the chance to end the old politics “once and for all.” It is curious to me that Obama’s us vs. them rhetoric, while he defines himself as a candidate dedicated to unity, does not receive the same scorn for being like a “conspiracy theory” that Edwards’ similar rhetoric routinely receives.

Congratulations, Mitt Romney, I would now vote for you over someone else.

RANDOM QUESTION: Finally saw Juno last night (with a friend who'd already seen it. It was the second best option available--There Will Be Blood was sold out, and neither of us (surprisingly) felt like going to see the VeggieTales movie), and something's been bothering me about it since.

It's this: why does Juno play "All the Young Dudes" for the Jason Bateman character? A teenager of any sophisticated music snobbery--one of her favorite bands was the Runaways*--should be aware that Mott the Hoople gets played on classic rock radio. Granted, that's because it's one of David Bowie's excellent songs from that period, so it's not, oh, Free; but how she could expect that he might not know it fails me.

Alternatively, she could play the song because she has some half-thought-out plan to try and seduce him, but then, "Because the Night" or "Dancing Barefoot" seem like better choices, and more within the sphere of her taste.


*The Runaways are a great band to like because they remain obscure even now; in indie-cred terms, I think only the Heartbreakers are better, because they permit you to have the following conversation:

You, cool indie-rock person: "I've been listening to the Heartbreakers a lot lately."
Befuddled non-cool person who probably listens to the radio: "Uh, you mean Tom Petty's band?"
You: [rolls eyes] "No, the band Johnny Thunders was in after he left the New York Dolls."

HILARIOUS: See Alex Massie for the funniest thing I've seen this week.

WHEN HE'S RIGHT, HE'S RIGHT: John Locke, letter to Edward Clarke:

But the learning of Latin being nothing but the learning of words, a very unpleasant task both to young and old, join as much other real knowledge with it as you can...

...and sometimes he's not:

That [manual trade] of all others would please me best would be a painter, had it not one considerable argument against it, which is this, that ill painting is one of the worst things in the world; and to attain a tolerable degree of skill in it requires too much of a man's time. If he has a natural inclination to it, it will endanger a neglect of all other more useful studies, to give way to that which if he have no inclination to it, all the time, pains, and money shall be employed in it will be thrown away to no purpose. And therefore I think not of painting.

He says similar things about poetry, btw.

YOU KNOW: A week or so ago when the weather was in the 70s, a perfectly fine temperature if somewhat unnatural for mid-January, I looked somewhat longingly on this picture, thinking well, maybe winter isn't actually all that bad.

Having returned from the frozen tundra of Chicago, where a temperature of 12° on Sunday was noticeably warmer than it had been on Saturday, I have been freed from that desire. Winter, winter, go away...

LINK: A highly entertaining review of Robert Alter's translation of the Psalms. The primary criticism arises from the English idiom used for translation:

Translation comes from somewhere, the language and literature of the original, but it also goes somewhere, into the language and literature of the translation language. Too often the experts in one know very little about the other. The cliché that only poets can translate poetry is half true. More exactly, only poetry-readers can translate poetry: those familiar with the contemporary poetry of the translation language, the context in which the translation will be read. On the evidence here, Alter seems to know very little about the last hundred years of English-language poetry.

After which follow a good number of bad translations, ranging from the incomprehensible to the hilarious.

Incomprehensible:

Considering that the Psalms are meant to be spoken or sung, many of Alter’s lines are difficult to say: ‘Your throne stands firm from of old,/from forever You are’ (93) is one for elocution class, and the KJ ‘Make haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O Lord’ (70) has been turned into a stammer: ‘God, to save me,/Lord, to my help, hasten!’

Hilarious:

Inversion, the possessive, the unpronounceable and an unfortunate word-choice all converge in Psalm 18, where he transforms a dull line in the King James (‘As soon as they hear of me, they shall obey me: the strangers shall submit themselves unto me’) into: ‘At the mere ear’s report they obeyed me,/aliens cringed before me.’

The review follows up this criticism with counterexamples of the positive linguistic influence of the King James Version. The knock on the KJV (one I occasionally agree with) is that it was written in a language no one ever spoke, requiring, by way of consequence, much familiarity with written English before one can approximate it ...

(parenthetical note: I still remember well the one kid in my Sunday School class who owned a KJV Bible, and that we got into the habit of skipping him when reading Bible stories, largely because he could make nothing out of what he was to read. I can see this even now in my Bible study, where one must either have spent a long time with the KJV or else a good deal of advance notice to read it well. The lines do not scan in the manner of modern English, which makes reading straight more difficult. The trade-off point comes at memorization: a passage from the KJV is full of proper cadences, which, read correctly, remain in the mind, which is why I can remember large parts used in various liturgical services I've attended, even though it's been over three years since I last regularly had that experience.)

...but the reviewer makes the excellent counterpoint that the KJV translation of the Psalms lays down much of English's idiomatic poetic language.

Well worth your time, I must say.

LINK: Terry Teachout on one's obituary.

LINK: Sent along to my friend who is preparing himself to support Romney in the general election:

Romney is Al Gore. A sample:

...Where Huckabee, like Clinton, responds to the awareness of his own weaknesses with jokes, Romney covers up for his liabilities with stories that don’t pass the laugh test, whether it is varmint-related or whether it concerns one of his serious policy shifts of recent years. Not only has this chameleon act been transparent and insulting to the intelligence of informed voters, but it reflects a basic contempt for the public and reflects a belief that is probably widely shared in the business and political worlds that people can be made to buy anything if it is repackaged and promoted with the properly-tested marketing. Considering our recent political history, this belief may be well-founded, but when the promotion of a candidate reeks of focus groups and consultants a great many voters will look elsewhere (I know this is hardly a novel or remarkable insight), and if there’s one thing that Romney’s chameleon approach tells voters it is that he is afraid to speak his own mind.

There was a time (2000, when I voted (happily!) for Gore) that the idea of a technocratic, wonky executive branch was very appealing to me. Then I came to understand that technocratic wonkery does not, as a general rule, mean 'better government,' and in fact usually means the opposite. Consider Donald Rumsfeld, who was brought in to modernize the Defense Department, and had some quite fascinating, well-articulated views on how to do so. Bureaucratic incentives trump attempts to improve government, most of the time.

Back to Romney: my friend mentioned above tried to convince me that Romney's most recent policy contortions were his last, that having finally staked himself to die-had conservative positions (kind of), there was no way he could back out of them and retain any political effectiveness. I replied that there was nothing in his history to indicate that would be the case, and the dynamics of presidential politics generally indicate the opposite--this is how you end up with No Child Left Behind, Steel Tariffs, Medicare Part D, or (if you're a Democrat) welfare reform and NAFTA. Having as president a man who is known for his--let's say 'flexibility'--on issues of policy doesn't increase the odds. Hopefully, we'll never have to find out if that's true for Romney.

TRAVEL: Today is another travel day, meaning another day of feeling vaguely unsettled until I arrive back home. I first began to have this feeling traveling around Europe the summer after college--transporting onself, even under the best of circumstances and shortest of distances, is a full-day effort. A simple return flight to Durham from Chicago will take seven hours. In no way does this reflect on the people kind enough to have me--travel can be a hassle, but it's much better to see those you want to see--but, being unsettled, emails and other messages awaiting response will have to wait a few hours more.

FORMER MICHIGAN RESIDENTS THINK ABOUT THIS, TOO: Instapundit:

"SO THE CAR INDUSTRY IN MICHIGAN IS IN TROUBLE, but foreign carmakers are eager to open new factories in the United States -- just not in Michigan. If I were a Michigan politician, or voter, this would make me think about what Michigan is doing wrong."

THE NORMBLOG POLL: A FIRST ATTEMPT:

Norm has a new poll up: top ten favorite English-language novelists. He explains:

Note that I ask for your favourites and not for those whom you consider to be the greatest (should the first group not coincide with the second).

You are allowed ten choices. Yes, ten. Isn't that generous of me? I ask you to submit a top three amongst them, with another seven for good measure. If you rank your top three, as you may but do not have to, they will be awarded 4, 3 and 2 points; and if you don't rank them, they will be awarded 3 points each. Your other seven choices will get 1 point each.

My favorite novels are heavily skewed towards what I have been reading lately (and I enjoy Russian and French in translation, limiting my options). Any list must include:

Elizabeth Taylor (who I think of as a mid-20th century Jane Austen, though more comfortable with unhappy endings)
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ernest Hemingway
Graham Greene
Jane Austen

Dickens? Twain? Hawthorne? Joyce?

QUOTE FOR THE EVENING:

"I love how it makes me feel; it's like my heart is trying to hug my brain"

-Kenneth from 30 Rock, on coffee

HOW COULD YOU NOT WANT TO VOTE FOR THIS MAN?

[video sadly removed from youtube]

...and he laughs less than Jimmy Fallon, too.

THIS, DEAR STUDENTS, IS WHY YOU NEVER USE GOOGLE AS A SOURCE FOR ANYTHING:

From a comment on Ross' blog:

[earlier rantings omitted for brevity]
The story is almost certainly similar for the OKC bombing, although not as well documented. The agent provocateur there was Andreas Strassmeier. Both the FBI and ATF had several informants in the White Aryan Nation, the group that McVeigh was associated with, and accompanied McVeigh on scouting trips to federal buildings. Andy Strassmeier escaped back to Germany, was never interviewed in connection with the OKC bombing.

All of this is easily confirmed by a Google search.

These events are NEVER referred to in the 'big media', but are well-known to anyone who uses the internet as their primary source of information.

Come to think of it, that's a pretty good argument against using the internet as your primary source of information, too.

SO I'VE NEVER WATCHED A BARACK OBAMA SPEECH BEFORE:

...and I was reminded why I don't especially care for political oratory.

LINK: Excuse me if I am slow to hold Eric Clapton to conservatism's collective bosom. I read to the following point:

In Clapton: The Autobiography, the artist unthreads with surprising success the strung-out, blasphemous, and profane mantle of celebrity to reveal a profoundly conservative Englishman who almost incidentally wielded the iconic ax of the sixties counterculture. His life was a mess, but his instincts were sound, and, like the character in a good Victorian novel, it all came right in the end. Like most successful conservatives, he also had talent.

and searched the remainder of the piece for 'Enoch Powell.' Nothing. For those unfamiliar with the connection, wikipedia offers a nutshell version:

On August 5, 1976, Clapton was placed the center of controversy when he spoke out against increasing immigration during a concert in Birmingham. Visibly intoxicated, he remarked that England had "become overcrowded" and told the audience to "Stop Britain from becoming a black colony". He said, "I used to be into dope, now I'm into racism." Clapton also voiced his support of controversial political candidate Enoch Powell, telling the crowd "I think Enoch's right...we should send them all back. Throw the wogs out! Keep Britain white!". These comments, along with equally controversial remarks and actions by David Bowie apparently expressing admiration for fascism (which Bowie later apologised for), led to the creation of the Rock Against Racism movement in the UK.

Clapton later explained that he felt angry since an "Arab" had felt his wife's bottom. He stated in a 1978 interview that he had "rabbited on about nothing". He stated that "what started it, was the upsurge in London of Arab money-spending and their lack of respect for other people's money. "How much is Hyde Park?" and all that, and for some reason it all came pouring out of me that night". In a 2004 interview with Uncut magazine, Clapton called Enoch Powell "outrageously brave". He also stated that "My feeling about this has not changed really. We have always been up to some funny business in this country, inviting people in as cheap labour and then putting them in ghettos."

I'm not willing to valorize the respect-for-home-and-tradition beliefs of someone whose racial views are so reactionary. British conservatism has a checkered history on racial questions, moreso than American conservatism (Britain had a viable fascist movement in the 70s, after all). Odd that it comes from a man who has done much to popularize the work of underappreciated American blues artists, but, well, irony's ironic that way.

There's an unfortunate strain of conservative thought which is always seeking to bring people into the fold, on the slightest evidence of conservatism. I say 'unfortunate' because most people's political views are far more complex than that. Clapton's an interesting figure, for a number of reasons, but I can't help but think that a fuller account, dwelling more on his shortcomings, would be more useful and interesting.

NOTE: The power cord for my laptop snapped on Saturday (pretty sure they're not supposed to do that). Rather than overpay Apple for an immediate replacement, I opted for a cheaper (40% of Apple's price), sturdier part from Amazon.

As a consequence, the old desktop has been taken out of storage. That any piece of technology from 2001 still functions is impressive to me. The keyboard has a satisfying heaviness to it; typing produces a nice click-click-click that, I imagine, must be something like a typewriter. Hard to believe this was ever new.

WAKE ME UP WHEN IT'S OVER:

More than the fact that I'm glad Huckabee won--I support him more than any of the other Republican candidates--I'm happy that Romney did so poorly. The man radiates insincerity. To the extent this functions as a fork in the eye of the Republican establishment, so much the better; though the parallels between Huckabee and William Jennings Bryan are too many for my comfort.

I have basically no opinion on the Democratic side of things. It's nice that Obama did well as it keeps Becky employed long enough to swing through Durham after South Carolina's primary, and I am on board with his 'Nuke Pakistan' policy. I would vote for Clinton above several of the Republicans (not just Romney), but I'm hardly the Democratic Party's target voter. Edwards used to be my preferred candidate (as little as four years ago!) but now the idea of a man who's won a single election in his life is not especially appealing.

But despite my various ideological beliefs, held with a greater or lesser degree of tenacity, depending, my real political affiliation is 'cynic.' I like my politics messy, and incapable of ever producing real change (the slide from cynicism to conservatism is not always so difficult). When I read this post from Althouse, I found I could not but agree:

Is everyone high on hope this morning?

Maybe the losers could have an antidote to hope theme. America, settle down. Don't get carried away with charisma. Running the country is not a rock concert.

Everyone so hopeful, so looking forward to change... it's unnatural. More seriously, there's something that feels vaguely wrong about basing one's political appeals on something other than substance and policy... perhaps well captured by the old Goldwater/LBJ exchange: "in your heart, you know he's right/ in your guts, you know he's nuts." Politics fueled by emotion... nothing good can come of this.

Sadly Alex Massie has yet to weigh in, so my inner cynic will have to wait a little longer.

MICHIGAN FOOTBALL UPDATE:

BLOG COMMENT OF THE YEAR: Unlikely to be surpassed:

"Foolish Megan! When Ron Paul is President the CONSTITUTION will cook your brunch and LIBERTY will tend bar!"

I hear Liberty makes an excellent cocktail.

NEW YEAR'S: A VALEDICTION

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice

-Eliot, Little Gidding