President Barack Obama announced Tuesday that he would be nominating federal judge Sonia Sotomayor to fill Justice David Souter’s open seat on the Supreme Court. Just about every news source – the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Washington Post, to name just a few – will tell you that, if confirmed by the Senate, Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic judge to sit on the highest court in the land.
While it is certainly exciting for someone of her singular upbringing to be even nominated, it does us little good to throw around superlatives. After all, that is not what being judicious is all about. There is even an argument to be made (as other publications such as the Wall Street Journal have vocalized) that Benjamin Cardozo, who served on the Court from 1932-1938, may have descended from Portuguese Jews and would technically count as the first Supreme Court justice of Hispanic descent. Fair enough.
But as a practical matter, Sotomayor’s ethnicity will not affect her confirmation. Assume it will even bear strongly on how she will cast decisions and pen opinions, as she has famously said it should. Such considerations are, politically speaking, largely irrelevant to the question of her confirmation.
As soon as Minnesota Senator elect Al Franken is seated – and he will be seated – the Democratic Party will control a supermajority in the Senate. That is a voting block powerful enough to invoke cloture to break any Republican filibuster, while having plenty left over for the simple majority required to vote her in. Dems also control the Senate Judiciary Committee, which conducts the confirmation hearings, twelve to seven. It would be more or less fruitless to speculate about scenarios where this voting block is not completely behind Barack Obama and his nomination. Barring some shocking revelation or similar game-changer, the likelihood of Sotomayor not being confirmed is negligible.
So then what is so important about her ethnicity? Perhaps it is important to people because they want to call attention to something that makes them happy, excited or proud. Fair enough.
But to ascribe anything more than symbolic or nostalgic importance to her ethnicity, once we have ruled out its relevance to the political realities of her confirmation, comes dangerously close to judging her based on her heritage. And any judge, liberal or conservative, will tell you the importance of trying not to do that.
[AP, NY Times, Washington Post, WSJ, CNN, State Department, US Senate]
Jeff Dubbinis a TheSequitur.com senior editor.
I’m still trying to figure out whether this story is funny or sad.
WTOV of Steubenville, Ohio, reports that a clown was arrested for drunken driving while at an event where she was meant to entertain children. Police say the clown, Patricia Ingalls, left the scene of an accident prior to attending the event, where children later witnessed her being led away in handcuffs.
She feels bad about the incident. “[The children] were all hanging on me and saying, 'Don't take the clown,'" WTOV reports Ingalls as saying.
So, funny or sad? I’ll break it down and let you decide.
The sad parts:
There’s nothing funny about drunken driving or leaving the scene of an accident.
What should have been a joyous occasion for the children at this event turned into a possibly traumatizing episode of their lives, and they will never be able to look at clowns the same.
It is likely that Ms. Ingalls will have trouble finding gainful employment in the near future. That is, if you can call being a clown gainful employment in the first place.
The funny parts:
There’s a drunk clown – that by itself is worth a laugh.
In addition, the idea of a clown getting wasted before performing at a children’s party might be hilarious in the next Judd Apatow movie (prediction: either Seth Rogen or Vince Vaughn would play the clown).
While I feel bad that children had to see this, the terrified, helpless looks on their faces would be hilarious to the cold-hearted, cynical observer (or Internet blogger).
After this careful analysis, it looks like a draw: this story is equal parts sad and funny, leaning to one side or the other depending on your disposition. (In my case, that means it’s leaning a little toward “hilarious.”) [WTOV] Branden Hart, TheSequitur.com's managing editor, works as an editor in San Antonio.
Remakes of old movies are a staple of cinema, whether they be reimaginations of source material for the original (as in Tim Burton’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”), shot-by-shot translations of a foreign film (such as last year’s “Funny Games”) or a modern reimagining of the original (see last year’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still”).
Both films have significant barriers to overcome before achieving critical success...Now, two more classics are slated for remakes, Reuters reports. First up could be a new “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” movie from Fran Rubel Kuzui, director of the 1992 original. The problem with a new “Buffy” is that, while the original movie may not have stood the test of time, the character lived on in Joss Whedon’s “Buffy” TV series. That series went on to spin off another series (“Angel”) and spawned countless comics, novels and video games. According to Reuters, however, Whedon is not currently involved with the project, as Kuzui and her production company still hold the rights to the character, and the new movie would not involve the characters from the TV show. I can’t imagine fans of the series being pleased with further adulteration of the character who has become a cult legend.
This leaves many to wonder why filmmakers bother with them.Next up is a remake of Disney’s classic, “Flight of the Navigator.” In the 1986 original, a boy ends up 8 years in the future due to one of the most awesome alien ships of all time, then actually gets to drive the thing around for the better part of an hour, making him the envy of every boy who saw the movie. I wonder, however, if the charm of the original – a story about a young boy dealing with technological wonders beyond the imagination – would be lost on the technologically savvy youth of today. In the original, we were wowed by talking computers and unique interaction with electronics; less than two decades later, talking to machines (think automated phone systems) isn’t just common, it’s a mundane task seen as more of an annoyance than an exciting feat of modern technology.
Both films have significant barriers to overcome before achieving critical success, the most important being this: Most remakes never quite capture the success or capitalize on the redeeming qualities of the original. This leaves many to wonder why filmmakers bother with them. The answer is, of course, that they often do bring in money, and nothing is more important in Hollywood than cold, hard cash. [Reuters1, Reuters2]Branden Hart, TheSequitur.com's managing editor, works as an editor in San Antonio.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been appearing in interviews to convince America that so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding have kept us safe. In other words, to prove that torture works. But his “proof” amounts to nothing more than asserting: we did it, and nothing happened, so therefore it worked.
Everybody knows that just because two things happened together does not mean one caused the other. Yes, the United States tortured alleged terrorists in the past seven and a half years. And yes, America was not attacked for seven and a half years. But America has also had the TV show "24" playing for the last seven and a half years – maybe that’s the reason!
And it is not even true that Americans have not been attacked. American soldiers in Iraq have certainly not felt the bounty of safety acclaimed by Cheney. According to the Department of Defense, Operation Iraqi Freedom has resulted in 4,287 U.S. military casualties (as of May 11, 2009). Why didn’t torture protect them?
And as soon as you consider that America might not have been attacked even without torturing, you realize that Cheney’s repeated assertions contain one final fallacy. It’s never been enough just to avoid catastrophic attacks, which he is so thrilled about. Compare a world in which America does not get attacked but many nations despise it to a world in which America does not get attacked but all nations love and respect it. It is not enough to say, “We were safe for this limited period of time.” We can always be safer.
One way we can start: not surrendering our powers of logic when someone assaults us with faulty reasoning.
[CBS News, Department of Defense]
Jeff Dubbinis a TheSequitur.com senior editor.
A Taiwanese man recently suffered what many men might deem a fate worse than death. When sitting down on a toilet at his home in rural Taiwan, a snake bit his penis, Reuters reports.
The snake was hiding in the toilet and struck the man as he sat down. The report goes on to say he was then taken to the hospital, where he was being treated for “minor injuries.”
Minor injuries? Since when does a snake biting your penis constitute a minor injury?
Since when does a snake biting your penis constitute a minor injury?Apparently, the chief concern was infection. "As soon as he has passed the risk of infection, he can go," Reuters quotes a director at the hospital as saying. "A snake's mouth isn't always clean."
As cringe-inducing as this story is, my first thought upon reading it was, “If this happened to me, what would I tell my boss when I called in sick to work the next day?” Can you imagine the doctor’s note necessary to substantiate such a claim?
“To whom it may concern: Mr. Hart was unable to attend work yesterday due to a toilet-related injury sustained when a snake hiding in the bowl jumped up and bit him – right in the penis. As you may know, a snake’s mouth isn’t always clean, and we needed to monitor Mr. Hart (and his injured penis) until we were confident he was not in danger of developing a penile infection.
Sincerely,
Dr. John Thomas
P.S.: Your organization may benefit from distributing a pamphlet I am sending back with Mr. Hart, entitled ‘Basic toilet safety 101: look down before you sit down.’ “ [Reuters]Branden Hart, TheSequitur.com's managing editor, works as an editor in San Antonio.
Morning Coffee is a collection of top-fold news, oddities, observations and wisecracks, peppered with financial advice, movie reviews and more, gathered by TheSequitur.com contributors and the editors of the magazine's Nation, World, Culture and Progress sections.
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