If you open a window on any date in December (or up through 08 Jan), sausage ingredients fall out. Which is a pretty good description of Heffalump governance: Open any policy, and the conflicts of interest fall out (which is about the party and not "conservatism per se," difficult as it can be to distinguish the two)…
- In important entertainment industry news, the Japanese public showed that its collective taste is better than that Over Here as an anime piece overcame That Overblown-and-Overrated Film at the box office, even during COVID–19. Fighting demons is at least as relevant a commentary on today as a class-warfare-based "romance" in which everyone has to be a blithering idiot with less-than-zero situational awareness or the whole story falls apart (plus there's the whole blonde issue, but that's rather more personal).
- And in vastly less important entertainment news, best wishes to Elliot Page. It's less important for two reasons. First, it's nobody else's business; if one's identity/preference involves purple hedgehogs, all that should matter is that everyone is a consenting adult (although I draw the squick-factor line at leather-wearing bovine dommes named "Bossy" — I have some limits to my tolerance). Second, I'm anticipating immense schadenfreude as awards organizations struggle to recategorize the gender-divided "actor"/"actress" categories, perhaps most of all any debates over retconning Billy Kwan and (on point here) Juno herself. Those organizations deserve at minimum the questions about their own present and historical integrity that they're going to have to struggle with — even if they pretend not to do so.
Of note, it's interesting that even mainstream media (not just the Grauniad, but even the Chicago Tribune) is leading with the new identity and not the old. One wonders what J. Edgar "I keep my pink tutus in the closet" Hoover would have thought. I'm waiting for the X-Man-fanboy what-happened-to-my-crush-on-Kitty-Pryde backlash, though; "gay and out" was difficult enough for them…
- Or it could just be the end of all things. As it happens, I have deep, theoretical objections to the very concept of "musical theatre with recitative chorus that couldn't spell 'Greek' if handed the first four letters, which would be 5/4 time anyway (and we all know what that means)." I enjoyed Hamilton as an alternate narrative that exposes (but does not pretend to answer) some critical questions on American identity that are usually buried by political conformity in the classroom. On the other hand, as a sometime student of utopian fiction "alternate narrative" seems a perfectly ordinary method to me… however rare it is in live theatre, which is yet another aspect of my objections.
- Where have I heard proposals to sanction election attorneys facilitating Our Dear Leader's delusions through misuse of legal process before? I think it was about four weeks and 2,800 words ago. Shocking, isn't it, that there has been complete silence from ATRA and the usual lawsuit-
suppressionreform organizations — the ones who rail against "unfair to business" courts and plaintiffs' lawyers? Ya think the not-quite-explicit sponsorship of ATRA et al. by some of Our Dear Leader's law firms might have something to do with it? Or perhaps some fear that sauce for the goose/plaintiff's bar might be sauce for the gander/insurance defense bar? Consider just how often sanctions are imposed under Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 11(b)(4)… and then just say "tobacco, asbestos, and phosphorylation-regulating herbicides don't cause human cancer" with a straight face.