The Conversation -- January 3, 2024
Tom Sullivan of Hullabaloo calls to our attention Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed to reduce the Congressional representation and number of Electors in states that suppress the votes of some citizens. A "Section 2 case is now moving toward resolution. Briefs have been filed, and oral argument is expected shortly before the court of appeals in Washington, D.C," according to Michael Meltzner, writing in the American Prospect. Thanks to RAS for the link.
Vivian Yee & Farnaz Fassihi of the New York Times: "A pair of explosions on Wednesday at a commemoration for Iran's former top military general Qassim Suleimani killed at least 103 people and wounded another 171, according to Iranian officials. The blasts sowed fear and grief in Iran and heightened tensions in the broader region even further a day after an explosion killed several Hamas officials in a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon. Iranian officials told state media that a pair of bombs placed in bags along the road toward the cemetery in Kerman, Iran, had exploded as a procession of people was on its way there to commemorate the four-year anniversary of General Suleimani's assassination by the United States. The officials said the bags appeared to have been detonated via remote control, leaving bodies in pieces on the ground." An AP story is here.
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Emily Brooks of the Hill: "House Republicans' already-slim majority will dwindle even further later this month when Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) resigns earlier than expected. Johnson's office on Tuesday confirmed the congressman's new official resignation date of Jan. 21, after he was expected to resign to take a job as president of Youngstown State University before mid-March. The resignation will leave the House with 219 Republicans, 21 Democrats, and three vacancies -- meaning Republicans will be able to afford to lose only two votes on any party-line measure, assuming full attendance."
Tracey Tully, et al., of the New York Times: "Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey -- already accused of using his political influence to benefit Egypt -- was newly charged on Tuesday with using his power to help the government of Qatar. Mr. Menendez, 70, was charged by federal prosecutors with accepting bribes from Fred Daibes, a prominent New Jersey developer, in exchange for the senator's help securing financial backing from an investment fund with ties to the Qatari government." CNN's report is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Awwwk-ward! News of the new charges broke while Menendez' daughter Alicia Menendez was hosting a two-hour MSNBC show that, were she not hosting, would have announced the charges in breaking news. Update: So in the show that followed Menendez's, Ari Melber reported the new charges.
Josh Gerstein, et al., of Politico: "Bob Menendez isn't the only Washington insider in hot water for his dealings with Qatar. Two longtime Republican political consultants who backed Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign admitted in court filings Tuesday to deceiving the Justice Department about their lobbying activities on behalf of the small but wealthy Arab nation. Barry Bennett and Doug Watts acknowledged they accepted funds from the Qatari government in exchange for promoting efforts to influence U.S. policy in the Middle East and engaged in a scheme to mislead investigators about those dealings. The charges against the two consultants were publicly disclosed in court documents in Washington just minutes before federal prosecutors in New York unveiled a new indictment against Menendez (D-N.J.) that charged him with aiding the Qatari government in exchange for bribes." ~~~
~~~ Devlin Barrett & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post:"Two Republican operatives are preparing to admit to trying to evade foreign lobbying laws in 2017 and 2018, according to court papers filed Tuesday -- bringing an end to a long-running probe into whether they surreptitiously ran a D.C.-based advocacy group on behalf of Qatar. One of those charged, Barry Bennett, served as an unpaid adviser to the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Douglas Watts, an associate of Bennett, was also charged in separate court papers. Bennett and Watts also once worked for the campaign of Ben Carson, then a GOP presidential candidate."
Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "Lawyers for ... Donald J. Trump on Tuesday made their final written request to a federal appeals court to grant Mr. Trump immunity to charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, arguing the indictment should be tossed out because it arose from actions he took while in the White House. The 41-page filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was the final step before the defense and prosecution debate the issue in front of a three-judge panel next Tuesday.... The immunity challenge is being considered by Judge Karen L. Henderson, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, and by Judges Florence Y. Pan and J. Michelle Childs, who were put on the bench by President Biden.... [The Trump lawyers] claimed [in their filing] ... that a long history of presidents not being charged with crimes suggested that they all enjoyed immunity. They also said that prosecuting Mr. Trump now could unleash a chain reaction of other presidents being indicted.... Mr. Trump's lawyers ... [also argued] that because he had been acquitted by the Senate during his second impeachment of inciting insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, he could not be tried in a criminal court in the election interference case."
Brad Reed of the Raw Story posts remarks of several GOP senators who said they acquitted Trump of impeachment charges because the criminal justice system was the venue for him to be held to account for "the violent, despicable acts of January 6th." IOW, it never dawned on them that Trump would claim immunity from prosecution because a 2/3rds majority of the Senate had not found him guilty of the impeachment charges. (Also linked yesterday.)
Why did American Disaster Liz Cheney ... ILLEGALLY DELETE & DESTROY most of the evidence, and related items, from the January 6th Committee of Political Thugs and Misfits. THIS ACT OF EXTREME SABOTAGE MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR MY LAWYERS TO PROPERLY PREPARE FOR, AND PRESENT, A PROPER DEFENSE OF THEIR CLIENT, ME. All of the information on Crazy Nancy Pelosi turning down 10,000 soldiers that I offered to to [sic] guard the Capitol Building, and beyond, is gone. -- Donald Trump, social media post, January 1
"... time and again..., Trump and his allies have simply invented the claim that he requested 10,000 troops before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, twisting an offhand comment into a supposed order to the Pentagon. A federal judge recently considered testimony on this point and dismissed a Trump aide's account as 'incredible.' Now, Trump has seized on House GOP claims that some records are missing from the archives of the House select committee.... The Democratic chair who headed the committee denies anything was lost; instead, he says some sensitive materials were withheld from the House archive to protect witnesses.... The special counsel who is prosecuting Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election -- although not for the Capitol insurrection itself -- says the withheld materials have already been provided to Trump as part of discovery in the case." -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post
Zack Beauchamp of Vox reports that fear of physical violence by Trump supporters has caused many politicians and officials to change their behavior: "Across the board and around the country, data reveals that threats against public officials have risen to unprecedented numbers.... The threats are coming from across the political spectrum, but the most important ones in this regard emanate from the MAGA faithful.... Elected officials who dare defy the former president face serious threats to their well-being and to that of their families -- raising the cost of taking an already difficult stand.... 'Violence and threats against elected leaders are suppressing the emergence of a pro-democracy faction of the GOP,' writes Rachel Kleinfeld, an expert on political violence.... 'Trump today retains an overwhelming power to deploy vitriol and violence against his political rivals.' [writes Jacob Ware of the Council on Foreign Relations.]... Trump's hardcore base is motivated by social grievances that are known to give rise to violence.... The former president's rhetoric has often directly encouraged violence.... As Trump returned to the campaign trail in 2023, he became increasingly willing to employ naked authoritarian rhetoric and physical threats."
Steve Brodner of the Washington Post draws a group picture of the 147 Congressional Republicans who objected to counting Joe Biden's Electoral College votes. "... they are, drawn together; a collection of American politicians engaged in using democracy in order to attain the power to subvert it." MB: Although Brodner's account is unclear, he seems to mean that 117 of these miscreants are running for re-election. Scroll on down the page for some details on some of the insurrection's stars.
Presidential Race 2024
Jenna Russell of the New York Times: "Lawyers for ... Donald J. Trump filed an appeal on Tuesday seeking to overturn the ruling last week by Shenna Bellows, Maine's secretary of state, to bar him from appearing on the state's Republican primary ballot. Ms. Bellows, a Democrat, 'was a biased decision maker who should have recused herself and otherwise failed to provide lawful due process,' lawyers for Mr. Trump wrote in the 11-page appeal filed in Maine Superior Court. They further argued that she had 'no legal authority to consider the federal constitutional issues presented by the challengers.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: BTW, on MSNBC last night, Lawrence Tribe didn't really say, but hinted at, another consideration that caused me to realize the importance of the Supreme's ultimate decision in the Fourteenth Amendment cases against Trump. If the Supremes rule in favor of Trump and essentially ignore the insurrection clause by dreaming up some phony excuses, they will make themselves active participants in the dismantling of U.S. democracy. Tossing a Constitutional requirement is tossing the rule of law. They have done as much before when they have overruled laws -- like most of the Voting Rights Act -- that enhanced democratic processes, but to directly dismiss a Constitutional provision would be a direct attack on the Constitution.
** Emma Haidar & Cam Kettles of the Harvard Crimson: "Harvard President Claudine Gay will resign Tuesday afternoon, bringing an end to the shortest presidency in the University's history, according to a person with knowledge of the decision. University Provost Alan M. Garber '76 will serve as Harvard's interim president during a search for Gay's permanent successor, the Harvard Corporation -- the University's highest governing body -- announced in an email on Tuesday.... Gay's resignation -- just six months and two days into the presidency -- comes amid growing allegations of plagiarism and lasting doubts over her ability to respond to antisemitism on campus after her disastrous congressional testimony Dec. 5. Gay weathered scandal after scandal over her brief tenure, facing national backlash for her administration's response to Hamas' Oct. 7 attack and allegations of plagiarism in her scholarly work." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ The New York Times liveblogged developments here. See yesterday's Conversation for some entries. The New York Times story is here.
** Paul Krugman of the New York Times: "The American system of chattel slavery wasn't motivated primarily by racism, but by greed. Slaveholders were racists, and they used racism both to justify their behavior and to make the enslavement of millions more sustainable, but it was the money and the inhumane greed that drove the racist system.... Estimates of the market value of slaves before the Civil War vary widely, but they were clearly worth much more than the land they cultivated, and may well have accounted for the majority of Southern wealth. Inevitably, slaveholders became staunch defenders of the system underlying their wealth.... [In his memoirs, Ulysses S.] Grant noted that ... the slave states in effect demanded control over free-state policies. 'Northern marshals became slave-catchers, and Northern courts had to contribute to the support and protection of the institution,' he wrote. This should sound familiar. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, states that have banned abortion have grown increasingly frantic over the ability of women to travel to states where abortion rights remain...."
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Colorado. Anna Betts of the New York Times: "A man was arrested early Tuesday after breaching the Colorado Supreme Court building, holding a guard at gunpoint and opening fire inside, the local authorities said. No injuries were reported, although the judicial center suffered extensive damage. The incident, com[es] two weeks after the court voted to bar ... Donald J. Trump from Colorado's 2024 presidential primary ballot.... But the authorities in Colorado said they did not believe the shooting on Tuesday was associated with ... threats [related to the Trump case].... The man who opened fire inside the Colorado judicial center, which houses the state's Supreme Court and other judicial agencies, had been involved in a car crash nearby and had reportedly pointed a handgun at the other driver, the State Patrol said in a news release." MB: IOW, just a crazy gunman, not necessarily a MAGA crazy gunman.
Texas. Jesus Jiménez of the New York Times: "Emergency room doctors in Texas are not required to perform emergency abortions despite federal guidance that requires hospitals to offer stabilizing care, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed a ruling that sided with the state of Texas, which had sued the Biden administration, arguing that the federal guidance issued in 2022 was an overstep that would 'force abortions.' The appeal was heard by Judge Leslie H. Southwick, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, and judges Kurt Engelhardt and Cory Wilson, who were appointed by ... Donald Trump. Judge Engelhardt wrote that the federal guidance ... 'does not mandate any specific type of medical treatment, let alone abortion.'"
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Israel/Palestine. The Washington Post's live updates of developments Wednesday in the Israel/Hamas war are here: "The Israel Defense Forces said its troops are 'highly prepared for any scenario,' after Hamas reported the death of Saleh Arouri, one of its senior leaders, in a blast in a Beirut suburb. Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group based in Lebanon, blamed Israel and said the strike will not pass 'without a response and punishment.' Its leader, Hasan Nasrallah, is expected to give a speech Wednesday that may offer some indication of their plan.... Israel has not claimed responsibility for the Beirut attack, but a U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive operations, said Israel was behind the strike. The [U.S.] State Department on Tuesday condemned as 'inflammatory and irresponsible' calls by Israeli right-wing lawmakers for the forcible relocation of Palestinians from Gaza. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the United States has been told that 'such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government.'" ~~~
~~~ The New York Times' live updates for Wednesday are here. CNN's live updates are here.
News Ledes
As CNN reported yesterday, "A Japan Airlines plane carrying hundreds of passengers burst into flames at Tokyo's Haneda airport on Tuesday after it was in collision with [a Japan Coast Guard aircraft]." ~~~
~~~ New York Times: "Through skill and luck -- one aviation expert called it 'a miraculous job' -- the flight crew of the Japan Airlines plane evacuated all 367 passengers and 12 crew members safely at Haneda Airport near Tokyo Bay, according to Japan's transport minister, Tetsuo Saito.... Video aired by NHK shows a fireball streaking across the tarmac as the plane touched down. As frightening as that looked from outside the plane, it was even scarier inside.... 'The entire cabin was filled with smoke within a few minutes,' [a Swedish passenger said]." ~~~
~~~ Marie: As I heard reports on television of the successful evacuation of all passengers & crew within minutes, it dawned on me that this probably would not have happened on a U.S. flight: me-first American passengers would be trampling over others as they all ran for the exit doors, some would shove others aside, some would block the aisles as they tried to get luggage from the overhead carriers, some would ignore instructions, etc. There's a reason it's against the law here to yell fire in a crowded theater: we all know damned well Americans are incapable of carefully & methodically exiting a theater in a perceived emergency.
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Reader Comments (28)
What went wrong? I don't understand why Claudine Gay plagiarized others in her Ph.D. dissertation and "about half of the 11 journal articles listed on her résumé."
When I was in grade school, we learned the rudiments of what plagiarism was & how to avoid it when we wrote out adorable little "research" papers. I'll admit I thought if I changed one word of a sentence from "The World Book" -- like writing "was" instead of "is" -- then I didn't have to cite my source. But I got over that childish (and convenient!) misapprehension fairly early on.
In junior high school and high school, we were taught when and how to properly cite sources. At the University of Wisconsin, almost all freshmen were required to take a year of freshman English (I think some Wisconsin high-school grads were allowed to test out of taking the course), where again we were drilled on how to use & attribute sources on research papers.
I thought maybe Gay went to crummier schools than I did, but no. Her education included Phillips Exeter prep, Princeton, Stanford & Harvard -- all private schools with much better reputations than the quite ordinary public schools I attended. Did these fancy schools not teach Gay how to write an academic paper? That seems unlikely.
I've assumed my own experience was pretty standard, but maybe not. So for those of you who had to write college (or more advanced) papers, I'd like to know what your how-to experience was in regard to citing sources.
What I recall is that I found "op cit" to be the greatest invention since air. Those were the days of typewriters, carbon papers, and big wheel erasers with brushes attached. Anything that lightened the physical burden was good. "OP cit" saved a lot of strokes and platen adjustments.
How was I trained? Turabian on the book list. Read it or don't, you takes your chances if you don't.
Marie,
In grammar school we were taught that copying someone else’s words, without quotation marks, was basically stealing. This sort of approach was carried on and more stringently enforced in high school. By the time I got to college, it was clear that no sin committed in a school was more egregious than plagiarism. And full disclosure, I attended the same school Ms. Gay had, until yesterday, presided over.
There weren’t many things, back then, that Harvard would kick you out for, but plagiarism was one, and, by all accounts, it was the biggest. A story making the rounds back then went like this. A student turned in a paper with a paragraph that got an immediate reaction from the professor teaching that class. The offending sentences had no citation attached, meaning this kid was passing those ideas off as his own, meaning…plagiarism. Holy copycat, Batman!
The professor was sure he had read those words somewhere before. After a bit of back and forth, he recalled the author and the book from whence came this same paragraph. Off to Widener Library he goes (plagiarism, because of the seriousness of the charge—immediate dismissal—had to be proved). No book. It had been removed (ie, stolen—that student thought he was clever).
A further search of Harvard’s many other libraries turned up negative as well. The book was out of print and wasn’t a very common one, probably why the kid thought he could get away with it. The story goes that the professor went on a nationwide hunt for this book and finally found a copy, god knows where. But because the book was so rare, the holders of said tome were reluctant to send it on.
After additional inquiries, the book was found, sent along, presented to the ad board, an administrative body at Harvard, and the kid got the boot. The story concluded that he might be allowed to reapply after two years, but readmission was in no way guaranteed.
The fact that I can recall that story so well after so many years attests to the seriousness of that offense at Harvard back then. It may have been apocryphal, but the message was delivered loud and clear, plagiarize and get caught, you are gone, baby, gone. Doing the nasty with a professor’s wife (or husband) wouldn’t get you kicked out, drunkenly punching a Harvard cop wouldn’t either, neither would a whole lot of screwy things. But plagiarism would.
I guess it’s different now.
Look, I can see how someone writing a scholarly book or lengthy article, working off many different sources and dealing with multiple drafts could let something slip through the cracks. Once. But 11 times? I don’t know anything at all about Claudine Gay, but honestly, you get bagged once, or you knowingly let something slide, you have to expect that someone, somewhere, will call you out. And these days, with digital libraries available to anyone, it’s a whole lot easier to prove than when that (possibly apocryphal) professor went on the hunt to track down a source.
Just don’t do it. How hard is it to cite your sources? And unfortunately, this episode gives assholes like Stefanik more reasons to attack educational institutions. Just what we need.
I had much the same training and experience as you, Marie, in much the same sequence. I'd summarize it this way.
I began cheating when I was very young but I would maintain I was forced into my brief life a crime by the unreasonable expectations laid upon us by the solid but unimaginative school I attended back there in the 1950's.
Sixth grade I think it was. Write a report on a South American country. Eight or ten pages, it was to be...and here I was, a boy who had trouble coming with up enough words to write those post-birthday and Christmas thank you letters my overly polite mother made me write. Oh, what to do?
What to do was to consult the one volume of Funk and Wagnall's we had picked up at Safeway for 99 cents. It was the first and only volume in a set we never completed, but it was enough. Within its pages was all I didn't know but needed to write about Argentina...so I did....without citation.
As far as I knew, the whole class copied the material they turned in.
By the time I got to high school, I was making up my own sentences and once when I was in desperate need of one in a formal debate, my own fact. So...the criminal tendency did persist.
The college account could be much longer, but the short version: I stubbornly clung to to writing what I thought to be my own ideas, so mostly avoided the temptation to borrow anything, let alone anything without attribution. The one exception I recall may have been in a thesis. I dimly remember borrowing the outlines if not the language of an idea from something I read that fit so neatly into my own thinking about the relationship of time, sequence and causation in romantic poetry that I used it as my own....but with some hesitation.
Now( somewhere) I have nothing left but forty or fifty pages of something I haven't read since 1968 and a very vague and likely misplaced sense of guilt.
I'm still a Catholic boy.
Re: Jan 1 "Truth" social post by DJT-
Methinks it's past time for Glenn Kessler to award tfg a perpetual bottomless Pinocchio.
I found Krugman's argument that greed not racism drove the American slavery system persuasive, but only if I was willing to go along with his definitions...
If greed has no bounds and is no more than an expression of wanting to have it all, any distinction between people and property quickly blurs.
Using the word "greed" as Krugman does would seem to assert its position as top dog on the sin chart. What sin is not an expression of wanting it all? The property? The woman? The man? The adulation? The respect? There is no end of "its" to want.
Maybe greed is the primal cause and all other transgressions are secondary.
But then Krugman is an economist, so he likely figured that out long ago.
Copied from the Wiki:
"... Pride (superbia), also known as hubris (from Ancient Greek ὕβρις) or futility. It is considered the original and worst of the seven deadly sins on almost every list, the most demonic. It is also thought to be the source of the other capital sins. Pride is the opposite of humility. ..."
Greed may be a strong motivator, but as sins go, traditionally, Pride takes ... pride of place. As noted above, it is probably the generator of the other deadly sins ... if you succumb to Pride, all the others seems justifiable or "I have every right..."
Think about some current notable offenders. Think of their apparent consumption by amorality and selfishness. That's Pride, kids.
No citations needed.
Justice served 8 years later in Kentucky.
That Kentucky clerk, Kim Davis, has been ordered to pay an additional
$260,000.00 to the couple she refused to issue a marriage license, on
top of $100,000.00 she was previously ordered to pay, including
lawyers fees.
Her lawyers claim that the couple's lawyers were overcharging.
High priced lawyers claiming other high priced lawyers charge too
much. Who'd thought?
Her reasoning was: 'Gods definition of marriage.' But hey Kim, you
worked for the County, not God. Who paid your wages?
https://thehill.com/homenews/lgbtq/4385821-
Conservative as I am, I'm reluctant to break with tradition or to argue with those certified to be wise, but I can't go with pride as the fountainhead of all sins.
Unless pride in this sense is only the ancient Greeks' way of anticipating Freud's overweening ego, it seems that mental health would require at least a dollop of it. If we don't have some pride in who we are, we are sure to be unhappy, and maybe even on the road to depression, which most would agree to be an illness.
So, even though excessive pride can generate other sins and can sometimes precede the fall it earns, some pride is both necessary and good.
Greed, on the other hand, is always bad.
And since I just made that up, no citations here either.
Thanks, everybody. It sounds like no matter what kind of school we attended -- public, private or religious -- we all got an education in how to avoid stealing somebody else's work.
I agree with Akhilleus that it is easy to make a mistake. You copy a sentence or two off the Internet. The author shares your own academese style of writing as well as your own view on the matter. In fact, you were citing the author to back up the point you are making. The phone rings before you enter the source and adapt or directly quote the writer. By the time you get off the phone, you've forgot you skipped the citation. You don't proofread that section for several days or a week. When you do reread it, you don't notice that you didn't write that sentence or two yourself.
But a person is not likely to go through that or a similar sequence in half the papers she writes. I think Gay had to know she was cheating, and decided to keep doing it. It was a formula that had worked for her. According to her Wiki page, she won an award for writing the best undergrad economics paper. I doubt she wrote the paper without "help" from real economists, and it's quite possible she borrowed some of their ideas without full attribution.
It's too bad her professors and her peers who supposedly reviewed her papers didn't catch her; she could have mended her ways much earlier and moved to the top of the academic ladder without falling off so spectacularly.
January and no ice cover on Lake Michigan. It's good for shipping but
a disaster in other aspects. Ice keeps the water from evaporating.
Ice protects the eggs that have been spawned by lake fish until they
hatch out in spring. Ice protects the lakeshore from erosion caused
by wind and storms.
Houses are sometimes built directly on a sand dune only a few feet
from the water. These houses will collapse into the lake if it stays
warm much longer is we have storms. These are 3 to 10 million $
houses.
Fortunately I am behind 100 foot high forested dunes, not lakefront
but I can hear the lake at times when it's really kicking up.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/great-lakes-see-little-
ice-warmer-temperatures-persist-rcna131959
Section 3 isn't the only part of the 14th Amendment relevant today Section 2 is also being pursued.
"The suit asks that the Census Bureau be required to enforce Section 2 of the 14th Amendment, enacted in 1868 to strip congressional representation from states that disfranchise voters. The text applies to general methods states adopt that keep people from voting and is not limited to racial discrimination. The proportional loss of congressional representation would also reduce the votes that states would get in the Electoral College.
The Section 2 case is now moving toward resolution. Briefs have been filed, and oral argument is expected shortly before the court of appeals in Washington, D.C"
@Patrick and @Ken Winkes: Sounds like the ancients got "pride/hubris" right. In fact, I can see racism as an offshoot of hubris. You are "proud" of your tribe, and you think your tribe is inherently better than any other, so you look down your nose at outsiders. You adopt some "proofs" of your own superiority and you use that supposed superiority to lord it over the "lesser" people.
And you're proud of it. You're sure you're doing the right thing. And you are offended and threatened when your imaginary superiority is challenged either with empirical evidence or moral arguments.
Before my senior year in high school, our military family moved from Lawrence, Mass. to Newport, RI. I went from an education-rich if Catholic environment to a depressed if Catholic institution on Bellevue Avenue that would be a condo 10 years later. Whatever hope I had built up the previous year or two that life wasn't pointless and painful was quickly dashed. I'm not sure whether that was entirely the reason that when we were assigned a paper I put it off until the very last day and then copied the entire thing from Brittanica. I then went through it strewing footnotes and ended by creating a bibliography from scratch. The I believe 12 or so fictitious entries were annotated perfectly, with publishing house and date of publication. I used these same references in the footnotes.
Years later, someone remarked that I probably could have spent less time on the paper if I had actually written it. However, doing so would not have addressed the rage I felt against the feeble minds that were tasked with educating me, nor would it have exposed how easily I could fool them.
Just for perspective on pervasive anti-social behavior, I shoplifted a lot that year, including my mother's birthday present. My parents never figured out that for a 16-year-old boy with no allowance, I had a really nice 45rpm record collection.
@RAS: Thanks. Fascinating. Really.
Family values
"Marjorie Taylor Greene reacted to accusations that she made “huge gains” on the stock market last year by blaming her son.
The Georgia Republican appeared in a report published Tuesday that named her among members of Congress who made the most money on the stock market."
On Pride:
I think the case can be made that what is sinful is false pride. That would include being proud of something one had nothing to do with.
I am filled with gratitude and humility at having had the immense good fortune to be born into a good family, in the United States, in the middle of the 20th century. That makes me one of the most fortunate people who has ever lived, and I did nothing to deserve it.
If someone worked and struggled and sacrificed to come to this country and make a life here I can see where that might justify a certain amount of self-satisfaction.
I strive to behave decently and honorably and to be a good friend, neighbor, and citizen -- but also strive never to forget how I got to have that opportunity.
@Jack Mahoney: Pretty funny. Had I been your teacher, I would have flunked you on the paper, but on the end-of-term Prize Day, I would have awarded you the prize for Best Parody of an Original Student Research Paper. Your effort showed real talent, just not the talent expected of you in that particular assignment.
Marie, if you were my teacher, I wouldn't have tried it.
@Ken Winkes: There's pride and there's pride (and I'm not talking about a group of lions here). See Merriam-Webster. The kind of pride the ancients & your average religious teacher were talking about were more along the lines of what M-W calls "conceit."
I think the difference between "sinful" pride and "useful" pride is often in one's purpose. For instance, I may be proud of some of my family members' accomplishments. Their accomplishments don't reflect one way or the other on me, IMO, but if I boast to you about my family's accomplishments for the purpose of implying that my family is better than yours, then I've gone right over into an offense.
This morning I accomplished a small task I didn't think I could do. I was proud of myself for studying up on how to do it, then following directions, and then doing the task. I was so proud, in fact, that I boasted to a friend that I had managed to do the task. Again, if my purpose had been to show off that I was more accomplished than she, that would have been wrong. But the task I managed to do today was something I think my friend can do/has done and one I had previously mentioned to her I didn't think I could do. I don't think I said anything about my little accomplishment that would in any way distress my friend.
So when you write, "If we don't have some pride in who we are, we are sure to be unhappy, and maybe even on the road to depression," you're not discussing hubris, but self-worth (or something like that). Yes, certain accomplishments, both large and small, "make us happy" and may enhance our sense of self-worth. But hubris and boasting and any attempt to use our enhanced feeling of self-worth to explicitly or implicitly disparage others is wrongful -- prideful -- behavior. It's the pride that Patrick writes can lead to other "deadly sins." And it's the reason we can't stand Donald Trump and his "very good brain."
Profiles in Porridge
The Raw Story piece linked above provides insight into one reason the Orange Monster escaped impeachment. PoT cowards looked the other way. No, scratch that. They didn’t just look the other way. That would have required them to vote “present”. Instead, they voted “Nay” on impeachment, meaning whatever Fatty did on Jan. 6, they could find no reason to impeach him. So rather than looking the other way, they effectively shouted “Nothing to see here, move along…”
And these weren’t just back benchers fresh off their first election, these w were guys like Marco Rubio and John Cornyn, “leaders” in the Party of Traitors.
They then tried to cover up their cowardice by sniffing that it was the job of the courts to punish Trump for his insurrection. Harrumph, harumph, harumph.
Sorry, boys. The constitution presented these guys with a platform from which to declare whether or not what Fatty did was wrong. It was their job, what they swore to do. Instead, they said “Is not my job, man” and scurried for the nearest rock to hide under. In other words, let someone else do my job. I’m outta here. “Of course, what Trump did was terrible, awful. But don’t look at me, I just work here…”
That’s how leaders lead in the Party of Traitors. Towers of Jello.
Marie,
But Fatty is prideful about stuff he didn’t even do. He takes credit for things he knows nothing about and had nothing to do with. He’s orders of magnitude the nastiest, slimiest chigger in American political history.
Hi, great discussion. I lost my comment halfway through, so I will try to redo. I don't recall specific rules or teachings about citations and their care and feeding, but by college, I certainly knew they were to be always used. I can recall typing papers, and the scrolling down of the paper to provide space for the expected footnotes for information on that page. A major pain. Plus, if you made a mistake, you had to retype the page. The little round eraser and others left holes eaten in the paper (onion skin or not--) and that was to be avoided, of course. By grad school, the typing was the same, but what with something called (I think) coraceable bond (?) a regular eraser took care of that pesky mistype. At some point there were little narrow strips to buy and paste over the mistake, and finally, white-out, and I don't remember when those happened. But always, if you didn't list the citations, numbered correctly, all at the back, there were still those pesky footnotes. I can't say that I regret not ever doing those again!
As to the Wisconsin case, that might be epic. How fast would that work? Not that I want WI to become GQP as it is wont to do, but I DO want to punish the 140+ that have gotten away with malfeasance since January 6, 2021. I think they are as guilty as Dumpieface. They may not be quite as full of rage, but they did what they did, and there is simply no excuse for it. And will we never be shut of the pesky (unpaid, probably) lawyers who keep throwing dung at the wall to see what sticks? Other commenters on Esquire politics blog are lumping the "pundits" and other talking heads with the 140+-- they are making it normal and okay and allow themselves and other people to ignore the Constitution because they are scared of MAGA insanity. Fear should not "trump" the law.
Happy January-- into the woods we go.
A brief, true story about academic papers and citations, etc.
A few years ago, I was working in an office which, among other things, created action memos and information memos for a federal cabinet secretary and other principals. A new person came in on a program whereby people from academia or state government can work in the department on limited appointments.
In this department, "action memos" are the vehicles for creating and implementing policies.
Unlike in academia, when you are the primary drafter, you need to clear your paper with others in your office, and other concerned offices and agencies, before producing a final paper. In the process, everyone gets to try to edit your work and argue or amplify your facts and recommendations.
The new person, who came from a university PhD program, wrote like a PhD candidate. Her drafts came back with so much red ink it looked like Bloody Angle at Gettysburg. She asked me for help, and when I looked at her work I immediately saw her problem. She had learned from the agency style manual that footnotes are verboten in papers to the principals, so she had incorporated attributions in her text. She also felt the need to qualify each assertion with its counter, for academic balance. And she included extra examples of whatever she was asserting, just for good measure.
All those things apparently worked in academia and she believed they should work in her new environment. Her drafts were l-o-n-g.
I gave her the short course in effective writing in that place, for those people. In short, nothing over two pages, the first sentence needs to tell the story, every word is declarative or expository, and if you need backup material use attachments.
She argued about all that, justifying the ways of academia. It took her weeks of getting beat up in the clearance process before she came around.
What's the point? Academic writing is apparently designed to be read by other academics. Those who thrive in that culture can't use that same style outside of the academic environment.
Also ... a different agency (cough CIA cough) uses footnotes in its "analyses" all the time. That's where they hide the truly icky and iffy stuff, because they know that principals (e.g., any president) NEVER read footnotes.
Two things…
Jeanne,
Corrasable typing paper was the bomb! It saved my ass many times. I tried that white tape crap and White Out, but their use was too finicky for my tastes. But, as I recall, you still had to be careful rubbing out errant words. You put a hole in the paper and you’re gonna be typing the whole damn page over again anyway.
Patrick,
Great point about what a difference style manuals make. When I first went to work in government, my internal memos and work written for public consumption were created to carefully develop a position. It wasn’t total Academia, but it came from the next block over. My boss at the time, who had spent years working the political game, would read my stuff then tear it up. “It took me four paragraphs to get the point. You gotta hit them over the head with it. The first time they read’…and in support of that position…’ they’re gonna throw it in the trash. Don’t screw around. Say right up front what you mean. Then type ‘The End’.”
It was a good lesson.
One more note on pride and the accurate distinctions Marie and others here have made about it:
I've long wondered if inborn physical or mental talent should be a source of anyone's pride. I ran faster (back when I could run) when I trained, but some people just didn't have the musculature or lungs for it because they didn't have the genes for it...and would therefore always be hopelessly outclassed.
Back in the day before distances were measured in meters, I participated in a track meet in which one of the fastest high school athletes in the country ran. I still remember his name. He finished the 220 at least 15 yards ahead of his competitors and actually slowed and looked over his shoulder as he neared the finish line.
How much of his evident superiority should have been a source of pride for him? Maybe only the improvement of his natural gifts that he had worked to achieve.
And applying that question to those who have done nothing to be proud of, like being born with white skin or to a large inheritance, but are proud of it nonetheless? Bugger to them, I say.
Proud Boys, my foot!
Had to check my memory.
https://www.si.com/college/nebraska/track-and-field/charlie-green-legendary-husker-sprinter-dies-at-76
But I don't remember the sunglasses. Those apparently came later.
@Akhilleus: The other interesting factoid to come out of the Raw Story article RAS linked is, "Top of the list was Rep. Brian Higgins (D-NY), who made 238.9 percent of returns, the study said."
Now, Miss Margie's 18.6 percent return is high but not necessarily so high it sets off insider-trading alarm bells, as some of her mean ole detractors suggest. My financial advisor told me a few years ago that my return that year was more than 15 percent, and because I'm an old fogey, he invests somewhat conservatively.
But 239 percent??? Higgins, who was a co-sponsor of the STOCK Act, which was supposed to curb insider trading by MoCs, had a spokesperson "explain" Higgins' stroke of good
luckinvesting.Coincidentally, I'm sure, Higgins announced in November that he was quitting Congress in February, increasing Republicans' narrow majority in the House.