Sometimes it's almost not worth trying to do a link-sausage platter, if only because including everything I want would look like a 20m-long buffet and not just a platter. During the Year of the Virus, buffets will be right out.
- As a further demonstration that the un/undereducated right wing is incapable of recognizing reflexiveness — and the irony that a purported expert on Chicago city politics can't recognize the pot calling the kettle black (pardon me, "natural cast iron" due to this commentator's insincerity and insensitivity) is too much to tolerate even if I was fully caffeinated — consider this column by a Chicago Tribune columnist who is so far beneath contempt that I refuse to name him. He claims that the purported Thought Police of the American [center-]left (there really isn't an organized American "left" — the most "progressive"/"liberal" organized groupings are center-left, including the American Greens) will get anyone suppressed who dares criticize anything. Meanwhile, this ignoramus who continues to rely upon an extensive private phone book, anonymous/pseudonymous sourcing often from parties with their own agendas even when they have legitimate information, utter failure to look at what is being responded to, and a screeching historical disdain for non-Christians, for the disabled, for anyone who values education over football, and for military veterans who dare to display any leadership effort that is not entirely consistent with BGen Jack Ripper hasn't been cancelled. Yet. It's obviously going to take another change of ownership at the Trib, together with wider recognition that Reaganism (especially NancyReaganism) was not the quasiparadisical promised land (especially without the manna).
I didn't know Mike Royko, but I knew some who did, and I read his column when living Back There (even the dubious Slats Grobnick material). This — person — is no Mike Royko. Not even in his focus on the actually corrupt nature of Chicago politics. But then, my car knows about that; it bloody well better, it's probably already registered to vote there (it turns 18 on 03 September).
- Some further news demonstrating that having more money doesn't mean one is self-confident and/or perceptive enough to avoid obvious fraud: Consider the arrest of various art experts for art fraud this week. Leaving aside for the moment the kind of financial resources one must have to become and survive as an "art expert," this also strikes at one of the fundamental — perhaps insoluble — problems in the arts: Provenance and reproducibility. But that's a long theoretical discussion for another time that mixes inherited wealth, class, cultural imperialism, and technology far too tightly for a Sunday morning. Or for a Sunday matinee performance.
- Which leads to the related problem that not all music piracy is the same… and some of what is accused of piracy isn't. Again, this leads into way too much theorizing about the arts for precaffeinated Sunday; we're not even talking about "bards versus troubadours," but something deeper. And, in the end, equally wound up with inherited wealth, class, cultural imperialism, and technology.
- Late-breaking news bulletin (from 198x):
SovietRussian intelligence apparatchiks accused of issuing bounties for killing of US personnel in Southwest Asia. Color me Entirely Unsurprised (which is not in the current Crayola-approved 128-color palette; but then, neither is Flesh, at least not any more). - Meanwhile, the Supreme Court's 2019 Term is slowly winding down, albeit without any clear end date. It is possible — extremely unlikely, but possible — that the Court could dispose of or formally defer for reargument all thirteen remaining matters tomorrow and Tuesday, allowing the "traditional" term-end on 30 June to hold. That the Court has already scheduled a conference for Wednesday, 01 July, though, makes that extremely unlikely — even aside from the large number of opinions and substantive orders that would need to issue first.
The one prediction that I will make is that the Drumpf finance case (Trump v. Mazars USA) and the abortion-restrictions cases (June Medical Servs. v. Russo and the converse, which were consolidated) will not be both decided with signed written opinions on the same day. They could both be deferred, perhaps on the same day; one could be deferred; one could be DIGed (dismissed as improvidently granted, which allows the lower-court opinion to stand without formally affirming it). But not full written opinions on the same day, especially since one was argued last month and the other argued months ago.