AFTERNOON: What Lisa Rubin said to Willie!

TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 2024

Old ways disappear: Journalistically speaking, we'd call it a moment that was.

Yesterday, opening statements were delivered at the Trump hush money / election corruption trial. When we left off this morning, Donald J. Trump had somehow "corrupted the 2016 election" (New York Times) by keeping the electorate from hearing a 30-year-old bogus story.

How dare he? He'd kept us from hearing an unflattering story which was untrue, bogus, false! According to the construction atop the Times' front page, we the people needed to hear that untrue story before we could know how to vote! 

Truth to tell, our high-end, mainstream press corps logic has functioned in similar ways for an extremely long time. Soon it was this very morning, and Morning Joe was on.

At 6:07 a.m., Willie Geist introduced Lisa Rubin to report on yesterday's session. To watch the entire segment which ensued, you can start by clicking here.

Rubin is a good, decent person. The initial exchange in question started off like this:

GEIST (4/23/24): Lisa, you're in the overflow room yesterday, watching all of this, kind of keeping track of Donald Trump's facial gestures and perhaps nodding off. What was your big takeaway yesterday from Day One?

According to Willie, Rubin had been keeping track of Trump's facial gestures and signs of his nodding off. When he sought her main takeaway, Rubin responded with this:

RUBIN (continuing directly): The big takeaway is that this is a crime about falsification of business records. And yet, what the government seems to have the most evidence of is of the underlying conspiracy. 

What's still unknown to me is how they're going to prove Donald Trump's own involvement in the falsification of the business records with which he's been charged. 

So we heard a lot of previews of the evidence of the construction of the conspiracy—who was involved in it, who will place Donald Trump with the knowledge and intent to commit election related crimes. What I didn't hear as much about is how Donald Trump then directed the coverup thereafter. 

So far, so journalistic! She seemed to be describing a possible shortfall of evidence, as indicated by the prosecutors' opening statement.

According to Rubin, the prosecutors hadn't shown how they plan to prove that Trump was involved in the falsification of the business records. Presumably, if the prosecutors can't prove that, their desire to tag Trump with 34 felonies will pretty much fall apart.

With facial features gone and forgotten, thar's how Rubin started. This was her account, as a journalistic observer, of the relevant facts.

So far, Rubin was coloring inside traditional lines. Below, you see what she said next:

RUBIN (continuing directly): For example, Willie, there is a 2017 Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Michael Cohen where the prosecution says they cemented the repayment deal.  How are they going to prove that? 

One, through the testimony of Michael Cohen. But I was looking yesterday to hear how else are they going to prove that? 

They say they have a photograph of the two gentlemen at that meeting. They also have invoices days afterwards, and then a couple of days after that the first payment to Michael Cohen. But I was hoping to hear that they have a lot more than that...

Say what? Rubin was hoping to hear that the prosecutors "have a lot more [evidence] than that?"

Just like that, Rubin seemed to move from reporting to rooting—to rooting for a conviction. Continuing from above, here's how she continued from there:

RUBIN (continuing directly): ...But I was hoping to hear that they have a lot more than that—somebody who was also at the meeting, who overheard the meeting, who placed some of these documents in front of Donald Trump, heard his comments about it. 

I didn't hear that yesterday. I'm hoping that we hear prosecutors have a lot more about the back end of the deal, as they do—as much as they do about the front end of it.

By now, we'd come a long way from facial gestures. Rubin said she hopes that prosecutors have a lot more evidence against Donald J. Trump than they seemed to signal yesterday. 

She's openly rooting for a conviction, as is everyone else on the slacker, joke-infested primetime end of this corporate Blue America clan.

In our view, that presentation by Rubin was remarkably undisguised. In our view, we're looking at the wages of "segregation by viewpoint"—at the fruits of creating journalistic clans where everyone shares a point of view and takes turns giving it voice.

(Including slippery claims about the doorman and bogus claims about the reason(s) why Cohen went to jail.)

 As on Fox, so too on MS—everyone agrees with everyone else during primetime broadcasts. Before too long, everyone is openly rooting for their preferred view to prevail. 

No one's assortment of claims and jokes will ever come under challenge. In Pundit A says something bogus, Pundit B repeats it.

A nation can always choose to run its news orgs this way. If you think this leads to good results, we'll offer the standard remedy:

Go ahead! Take a good look around!

Rubin seemed to sense a possible shortage in the evidence against Trump. She could have offered that observation as her main takeaway and just left it at that.

Instead, she powered ahead and shared her dream. It's what they do on the Fox News Channel. It's what we now do over here.

Human nature moves us this way. Does it lead to the best results?

An additional link: In order to watch that full exchange, click here for the Morning Joe site. After that, click on the video with this title:

What you missed on Day 5 of Trump's hush money trial.

ELECTION: Is it time for her to go?

TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 2024

The doorman knocks early and often: Journalistically speaking—and "at long last"—is it time for her to go?

Journalistically speaking, we refer to Lisa Rubin. She's either "an MSNBC legal analyst" or "an MSNBC legal correspondent," depending on which part of the thumbnail you read.

She's a relatively recent addition to the army of legal contributors who have clogged the airwaves at that Blue America corporate channel keeping ratings and profits high. She's also a food, decent person.

That said:

This morning, she appeared on Morning Joe to discuss the events which took place yesterday at the Donald J. Trump election conspiracy trial.

She appeared at the start of the 6 o'clock hour. By this afternoon, we'll be able to link you to videotape of what she said, and we'll give you a fuller transcript.

We did manage to capture some exact quotes as she spoke about yesterday's opening statement by the prosecution. She voiced her concern about something she heard—rather, about the things she didn't hear.

 In Rubin's view, several dogs had failed to bark within one part of the case against Trump.

Several dogs had failed to bark! Rubin voiced her concern:

What I didn't hear as much about is how Donald Trump then directed the coverup. How are they going to prove that?

I was hoping to hear that they have a lot more than that. I didn't hear that yet. I'm hoping that we hear prosecutors have a lot more about the back end of the deal—as much as they have about the front end of it.

Later, we'll offer a complete transcript. You'll be able to see the fuller remarks, in which Rubin announced that she's rooting for the prosecution to have a full and complete mountain of evidence against defendant Donald J. Trump.

Credit where due! Rubin wasn't hiding the fact that she, as a major journalist, is rooting for a criminal conviction. We recalled the remarkable breakdown form last year, when Rubin and several other "legal analysts" reported that they were pre-existing personal friends of E. Jean Carroll, who was suing Trump in civil court for an alleged sexual assault.

Carroll won her case. For reasons which never went explained, MSNBC had assigned several of her personal friends to report on the progress of her trial.

Journalistically speaking, that struck us as a remarkable state of affairs. This morning, there was Rubin, making it clear that she's rooting for the Yankees, not for the Red Sos. Or you may choose to see it the other way around.

This afternoon, we'll link you to tape. We'll transcribe the full statement. 

Journalistically speakng, it it time for her to go? We'll link, then you can decide.

Meanwhile, back at the New York Times, it was Protess and Bromwich all over again. Today, though, they were listed as Bromwich and Protess. 

Their front-page report about yesterday's session contains 36 paragraphs. In our view, the "mountain of evidence" boys got to the doorman fast. Front-page headline included:

An Unprecedented Trial Opens With Two Visions of Trump

(1) Manhattan prosecutors delivered a raw recounting of Donald J. Trump’s seamy past on Monday as they debuted their case against him to jurors, the nation and the world, reducing the former president to a co-conspirator in a plot to cover up three sex scandals that threatened his 2016 election win. 

(2) Their opening statement was a pivotal moment in the first prosecution of an American president, a sweeping synopsis of the case against Mr. Trump, who watched from the defense table, occasionally shaking his head. Moments later, Mr. Trump’s lawyer delivered his own opening, beginning with the simple claim that “President Trump is innocent,” then noting that he is once again the presumptive Republican nominee and concluding with an exhortation for jurors to “use your common sense.”

[...]

(8) Matthew Colangelo, a senior aide to the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, then seized on what he called a conspiracy in the criminal case. Over the course of a 45-minute opening, as Mr. Bragg watched from the front row, Mr. Colangelo calmly walked the jury through the prosecution’s argument that Mr. Trump orchestrated the plot to corrupt the 2016 election.

(9) The scheme, he explained, involved hush-money deals with three people who had salacious stories to sell: a porn star, a Playboy model and a doorman at one of Mr. Trump’s buildings.

(10) Mr. Trump, who faces up to four years in prison, directed allies to buy those people’s silence to protect his candidacy, Mr. Colangelo explained. Mr. Pecker took care of the model and the doorman, while Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer who is set to be the prosecution’s star witness, paid off the porn star.

Mr. Pecker took care of the doorman. The doorman arrived in paragraph 9, or perhaps right in paragraph 1.

The doorman arrived in paragraph 9, or possibly in paragraph 1. It wasn't until paragraph 25 that we rubes were advised about this minor detail:

(24) The plan was to watch out for any damaging stories about Mr. Trump—and then hide them from voters.

(25) Such stories arose swiftly. Soon, Mr. Pecker bought the silence of the doorman, whose story about Mr. Trump fathering a child out of wedlock turned out to be false.

The doorman's story—sold for cash in 2015, it dated back to the 1980s—turned out to be false! The doorman had been threatening to spread a story which happened to be untrue.

Presumably, Donald J. Trump would have known that the doorman's tale was untrue. But according to the logic of the Times report, Trump had engaged in a "plot to corrupt the 2016 election" by taking steps to stop a money-grubbing sleaze merchant from peddling a tale which was false.

So goes one part of the logic. According to Bromwich and Protess' account of the prosecution's claims, this was part of the gentleman's crime. More specifically, this was part of his corruption of our election!

The doorman knocks early and often in this morning's Times. That said, we don't have access to the text of the prosecution's actual opening statement. For that reason, we can't show you the precise way Prosecutor Colangelo presented this suppression of a false claim—the way he allegedly scored it as one part of the defendant's felonious crime.

We can tell you this:

Last night, an "all-star panel" had been gathered on Blue America's MSNBC for a special Ttump On Trial program. 

Who sat on that all-star panel? When Rachel Maddow called the roll, it turned out that they were just the same old people who host the channel's shows each night! 

(Everyone was there except Ari Melber, the channel's top legal host!)

To our ear, the all-stars were rather promiscuous, throughout their two hours, in the way they cited the doorman, generally failing to let us know that the story he had been threatening to peddle was false. 

Like Bromwich and Protess, they downplayed that minor wrinkle. No one ever mentioned the presumptive fact that Donald J. Trump would have known, decades later, that the doorman's story was false.

The doorman's story wasn't true; the doorman's story was false! Mentioning that basic fact reminds us out here in soma land:

Sometimes, the exciting things that people say lack the advantage of being true!

The doorman's story was false. How about the claim by Stormey Daniels—the claim that she had consensual sex, on one occasion in 2006, with the defendant Donald J. Trump?

Is it possible that her claim is false? Well yes, of course it is!

We ourselves would be inclined to bet that her claim is actually true. But we can't exactly prove it.

Have previous president engaged in sexual relations with women (arguably, even with one girl) not their wives? Dear Jack was worst of all, but the answer is screamingly yes.

In her 2019 biography of Barbara Bush, Susan Page judged that President Bush 41 had a long affair with NAME WITHHELD. For Peter Baker's account in the New York Times, you can just click here.

We don't know if that judgment was accurate. That said, NAME WITHHELD came from the finer class. All-stars only scream and yell when extramarital sex is had with a woman from a lower station, with (say it loud!) someone described a "a porn star." Everyone knew they mustn't discuss the conclusion Page had drawn.

At any rate, Donald J. Trump corrupted our 2016 election by suppressing a false report! This is the way the accusation scans in the hands of Bromwich and Protess, and we suppose in the somewhat shaky hands of the prosecution.

In fairness, we checked with other major news orgs. We checked to see how often the doorman knocked in their accounts of yesterday's opening statement. 

We checked with the Washington Post. We checked with the Associated Press (no paywall). 

We checked with CNN (no paywall). We checked with the mothership—with NBC News itself (no paywall).

None of them even mentioned the doorman in their reports on the opening statement! At the glorious New York Times, the doorman knocked in paragraph 1—and you had to get to paragraph 25 to learn that his story was false, with no mention of the fact that Donald J. Trump presumably would have known that.

In our view, the all-stars were quite promiscuous last night with a second part of this clumsy logical fandango. We refer to the reason(s) why Michael Cohen went to prison.

The all-stars kept referring to his jailing—and they kept finessing some basic facts. This brings us up to what Joe Scarborough said, this very morning, about Yeats and The Second Coming.

"Thew worst are full of passionate intensity," Yeats said in his famous poem. Scarborough quoted the line.

Journalistically speaking, it isn't always all that easy to see where "the worst" are plying their trade. 

The garbage is frequent at the "cable news" channel which exists in service to Red America. Journalistically, are some of the worst now found on Blue America's channel too? In our most famous newspaper?

At any rate, there was Rubin, this very morning, rooting, and rooting quite hard, for a criminal conviction. Later today, we'll link you to the videotape of what this good, decent person said.

She said she's hoping to learn that the prosecutors have more evidence than they suggested. Gone with the wind are the very old days of "just the [relevant] facts."

With us now are the fully emerging days of the clan. Within that realm, a criminal corrupted our election by  suppressing a bogus tale!

Tomorrow: Wherever the winding road leads

BREAKING: There is no trial but the one true trial!

MONDAY, APRIL 22, 2024

Excitement running high: There is no trial but the one true trial. All other news topics fail. 

We missed the start of Deadline: White House due to an appointment. We returned at 4:15 to find excitement running high and the (uniform) desire to convict running strong.

Also, we returned to hear some odd assertions. More on that tomorrow?

For ourselves, our overall view is this:

We regard this unfolding event as an embarrassment, but also as a major anthropology lesson. Does this help us know who we actually are? Consider:

In an array of formulations, we've been told that we the voters needed to hear Stormy Daniels' story so we could have a real election in November 2016.

That is what we've been endlessly told. Keeping that in mind, this is the story we needed to hear:

Daniels says she had sex with Donald J. Trump on one occasion in 2006. Ten years later, we needed to hear her tell us that before we could know how to vote!

(For the record, Trump says they never had sex. As such, she says the number of assignations is one; he says the number is zero. We would assume that her number is correct, but we can't exactly prove it.)

For the sake of rumination, let's assume her number is correct. On one occasion, ten years before, she and Donald J. Trump had sex. Voters needed to hear about that in order to know how to vote!

This framework draws us back in time. In our view, it draws us way, way back in time and shows us who we are.

We decided to cop to our overall outlook. Fuller analysis resumes tomorrow.

(For the record, we also assume that Donald J. Trump is (severely) mentally ill. Most of our cadre say that in private. They've just agreed not to say so out loud.)

For now, excitement is running high. This strikes us as a major embarrassment, but also as an anthropology lesson—as a chance to know ourselves.

In the meantime, and despite what we've said, please remember this:

"No people are uninteresting," Yevtushenko said. "Their fate is like the chronicle of planets." 

No people are uninteresting. According to Yevtushenko, they matter all the way down.

ELECTION: "Mountain of evidence" awaits Trump jury!

MONDAY, APRIL 22, 2024

Our journalism, ourselves: The New York Times is a national paper of record.

Based upon a recent report, that's especially true for the jurors who begin their service today in Gotham's admittedly "lurid," hush money / porn star trial.

Last Friday, the newspaper offered this report about the eighteen jurors and alternates. The report concerned where they said they get their news on their pre-trial questionnaire. 

Jurors were allowed to cite more than one source.

According to the Times' compilation, thirteen of the eighteen jurors named the New York Times. Among all other news sources, Google finished second, with five mentions. The Wall Street Journal scored four.  

One juror copped to the New York Post; the Daily News went unmentioned. Fox News was cited by one juror. CNN was cited by two of the jurors, MSNBC by one. 

In Gotham, at least among these jurors, the New York Times seems to rule. In part for that reason, we came close to being gobsmacked yesterday afternoon when this dual headline appeared at the top of the newspaper's website:

Will a Mountain of Evidence Be Enough to Convict Trump?
Monday will see opening statements in the People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump. The state’s case seems strong, but a conviction is far from assured.

"Will a Mountain of Evidence Be Enough to Convict Trump?" That struck us as a fairly remarkable headline.

That principal headline leaped off the screen. Also, "the state's case seems strong," the sub-headline said. 

This morning, those same headlines sit atop the current Today's Paper site, where the bulk of the jurors may get their first bite of the apple.

That struck us as a strange pair of headlines. Leaving the principal headline in play, the news report started, and starts, like this:

Will a Mountain of Evidence Be Enough to Convict Trump?

In the official record, the case is known as the People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, and, for now, the people have the stronger hand: They have insider witnesses, a favorable jury pool and a lurid set of facts about a presidential candidate, a payoff and a porn star.

On Monday, the prosecutors will formally introduce the case to 12 all-important jurors, embarking on the first prosecution of an American president. The trial, which could brand Mr. Trump a felon as he mounts another White House run, will reverberate throughout the nation and test the durability of the justice system that Mr. Trump is attacking in a way that no other defendant would be allowed to do.

Though the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, has assembled a mountain of evidence, a conviction is hardly assured. Over the next six weeks, Mr. Trump’s lawyers will seize on three apparent weak points: a key witness’s credibility, a president’s culpability and the case’s legal complexity.

Prosecutors will seek to maneuver around those vulnerabilities, dazzling the jury with a tale that mixes politics and sex, as they confront a shrewd defendant with a decades-long track record of skirting legal consequences. They will also seek to bolster the credibility of that key witness, Michael D. Cohen, a former fixer to Mr. Trump who previously pleaded guilty to federal crimes for paying the porn star, Stormy Daniels.

So the report began. The names of the editors have been withheld to protect the deeply entrenched. We're left with reporters Protess and Bromwich to assess and perhaps to blame.

We'll start by noting the lurid language on which the reporters settled. They delay use of the term "hush money" until midway through their lengthy report—but once they start, they employ the term six times.

Online, the lurid term appears six more times in asides composed by their editors.

(Should "hush money" be viewed as a lurid term? Notes on language follow.)

Protess and Bromwich delay "hush money," but otherwise they're all in. They refer to "a lurid set of facts" before their first sentence has been completed. They employ "porn star" in their opening paragraph, then again in paragraph 4.

Prosecutors will dazzle the jury with a tale with plenty of sex.

(On the Fox News Channel, the porn star is being described as an adult film actress. The "hush money" is sometimes called an NDA. You could also describe the star in question as "an adult woman not Donald Trump's wife." To our ear, Protess and Bromwich embraced the torpedoes as their news report sped ahead.)

We're speaking there of language selection. The reporters' decision to offer pre-judgment about the trial seems more remarkable still. 

Right there in the opening sentence of their news report, they present their subjective assessment of the case:

In the official record, the case is known as the People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, and, for now, the people have the stronger hand. 

The people have the stronger hand! It's hard to know why these reporters think it's their job to deliver that verdict even before opening statements have been launched. But some editor or editors—their names have been withheld to protect the entrenched—believed that this made perfect sense.

Who knows? It may have been the editors themselves who stuck that assessment in!

That judgment sits at the top of the paper the jurors will be reading today. Somewhere spending more time with his family, NPR's Uri Berliner may be thinking that he brilliantly called this other news org's shot.

Is something "wrong" with today's news report? As with almost everything on earth, that's a matter of judgment, opinion, assessment.

In fairness, it isn't like Protess and Bromwich don't have amazingly sound reasons for prejudging the case right in their opening sentence. Consider:

As the reporters proceed from the passage we've posted, they instantly quote one (1) "veteran defense lawyer who previously worked in the Manhattan district attorney’s office prosecuting white-collar cases." (For the record, they quote him by name.)

They quote this individual again at the very end of their lengthy report. It seems to be this veteran's view that the case against the defendant is strong. 

No dissenting view is cited in the lengthy report. No other legal specialist is cited.

On the basis of this one assessment, one thing leads to another. Eventually, "mountains of evidence" appear at the top of the jurors' news feed today.

Citizens, can we talk?

The reporters say that the trial which starts today will "test the durability of the [American] justice system." 

That statement is almost certainly true. But is it possible that this trial is also testing the viability of our current journalistic system—of that system as it has evolved over the past chunk of time?

Increasingly, that journalistic culture is built around "segregation by viewpoint"—the arrangement Berliner described at NPR, the system which prevails in the increasingly clownish corridors of American "cable news."

That organizational structure had helped create our prevailing two Americas—Red America and Blue. And before that segregation took over in full, we had the turn toward snark and snide engineered at this same national newspaper, to a large extent by the highly influential work of Maureen Dowd.

It started when she was still a reporter, fashioning a famous opening sentence in an earlier front-page report. The report appeared on June 9, 1994, and the snark and the snide were obvious. 

Above the fold on the Times' page one, here's how that report began:

Oxford Journal
Whereas, He Is an Old Boy, If a Young Chief, Honor Him 

President Clinton returned today for a sentimental journey to the university where he didn't inhale, didn't get drafted and didn't get a degree.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Oh boy, that was good!

Reportedly, this sort of thing made august editors inside the Times decide that Dowd was the wave of the future. Within a few years, she was an extremely influential columnist—and on the weekend before the nation voted in November 2000, her self-indulgent Sunday column, under the headline "I Feel Pretty," featured Candidate Gore examining his bald spot in a mirror, singing Maria's famous song from West Side Story.

It was the seventh column in which Dowd had featured the girlie-man Gore and his bald spot. Even then, this is what journalism had become as the nation moved toward the vote which eventually sent the U.S. Army into Iraq.

Today, the reporters are climbing a different mountain. It seems to us that the hills are alive with the sounds of their prejudgment.

Will the trial which starts today test our journalistic system? Has that system already failed?

We'll be exploring such questions this week. We'll also be asking if this trial is testing our election system—and if it's testing us.

The cadres who service Blue America have said that our democracy, such as it is, is at stake in this year's election. That assessment may well be correct.

That said, elections are a key part of some such system, and the current trial gives us a chance to assess the way we approach such public endeavors.

As the reporters note, the legalities involved in this trial will be extremely complex. They're explained one way in Red America, another way in Blue.

Due to "segregation by viewpoint," the legal contributors from the two nations never meet in the field. Their dueling assessments are spared such tests. We're left with the thrill of the lurid hush money porn star trial, the trial with the dazzling tale about sex.

According to the Times report, the prosecutors in today's trial say that the porn star in question had "a story to tell." Setting legalities to the side, we Blues have gone all in for that formulation.

We believe she had a story to tell! Before the public could know how to vote, we needed that information.

We say we needed that information. Anthropologically speaking, what might that say about us?

Tomorrow: The late Bronze Age elect

SUNDAY: The inability to have nice things!

SUNDAY, APRIL 21, 2024

Philosophy tooth and nail: Every so often, the big newspapers can't help themselves. They decide to publish an essay like the one found at the end of this link.

It appeared on Wednesday, in the New York Times, under this dual headline:

Why the World Still Needs Immanuel Kant
Unlike in Europe, few in the United States will be celebrating the philosopher’s 300th birthday. But Kant’s writing shows that a free, just and moral life is possible—and that’s relevant everywhere.

Who knew that Kant was 300? Meanwhile, did Kant’s writing really show that a free, just and moral life is possible? And are you that you actually know what that claim might mean? 

Eagerly, we fell on the piece, looking ahead to Saturday as the occasion on which we'd let ourselves finally have a nice thing. We had no idea that the conduct on cable news this week would spill over in the way it did—with rows of howlers waiting to be addressed where the breakers crash and drag. 

We're a bit of a skeptic when it comes to claims about the great philosophic canon. We're inclined to hold with Professor Horwich's view of the later Wittgenstein's view, in which the classic philosophical ruminations are directed at "mere pseudo-problems, the misbegotten products of linguistic illusion and muddled thinking."

We're strongly inclined to hold to that view. Still, we're always eager to examine the latest attempt to examine one of the great questions. 

In this instance, the question—more accurately, the alleged or purported question—goes exactly like this:

Kant was driven by a question that still plagues us: Are ideas like freedom and justice utopian daydreams, or are they more substantial? Their reality can’t be proven like that of material objects, for those ideas make entirely different claims on us—and some people are completely impervious to their claims. Could philosophy show that acting morally, if not particularly common, is at least possible?

Our view? If you think you understand what that means, we suspect you're already lost. Still, let's plow ahead.

In the essay under review, we come next to "a stunning thought experiment" allegedly conducted by Kant. In all honesty, we can't say that we're stunned by what you see here:

...Could philosophy show that acting morally, if not particularly common, is at least possible?

A stunning thought experiment answers that question in...the “Critique of Practical Reason.” Kant asks us to imagine a man who says temptation overwhelms him whenever he passes “a certain house.” (The 18th century was discreet.) But if a gallows were constructed to ensure the fellow would be hanged upon exiting the brothel, he’d discover he can resist temptation very well. All mortal temptations fade in the face of threats to life itself.

Yet the same man would hesitate if asked to condemn an innocent man to death, even if a tyrant threatened to execute him instead. Kant always emphasized the limits of our knowledge, and none of us know if we would crumble when faced with death or torture. Most of us probably would. But all of us know what we should do in such a case, and we know that we could.

This experiment shows we are radically free. Not pleasure but justice can move human beings to deeds that overcome the deepest of animal desires, the love of life. We want to determine the world, not only to be determined by it. We are born and we die as part of nature, but we feel most alive when we go beyond it: To be human is to refuse to accept the world we are given.

When modern humans read such work, we're generally disinclined to suspect that it might be basic twaddle.  

The essay appears in the New York Times. According to the author's identity line, the essay was written by a European "philosopher" who's writing a major academic authority figure.

We tend to assume that it has to make sense. For the record, this:

A similar reaction tends to occur when we Americans watch the emanations from our biggest stars on the corporate form of war by another means now known as "cable news."

In the matter under review, did Kant somehow manage to prove "that we are radically free?" Are you sure you even know what that claim even means? 

Also, within the realm of normal observation, wasn't history already clogged with well-known examples of the desire for justice "moving human beings to deeds that overcome the deepest of animal desires?" Do we have to prove the possibility of a type of behavior we've all seen with our own eyes?

When we ourselves were juniors in college, we failed Kant—or did Kant fail us? We've never quite settled that question.

We also note this unfortunate report from yesterday's New York Times:

Daniel C. Dennett, Widely Read and Fiercely Debated Philosopher, 82, Dies
Espousing his ideas in best sellers, he insisted that religion was an illusion, free will was a fantasy and evolution could only be explained by natural selection.

As it turned out, we had one degree of separation, and that at a very young age.

Back in grades 3-5, Professor Dennett's younger sister was, along with her buddy Alice, one of our grade school pals at Winchester's now-defunct Mystic (Public) School. 

At some point, the ladies began making obscene gestures during the course of the long, boring day. At the time, we didn't know what their insinuative hand signals meant, but we sensed that they were drifting into forbidden arenas.

Incomparably, we rose above, focusing on our times tables and on other tools of the trade. Across the street lived [NAME WITHHELD], who went on to be the only two-time president of the Harvard Advocate.

Even Learned Hand only achieved that distinction once—and his name was Learned Hand! The future president was our older sister's age. We were two of five (5) Mystic kids who lived and played right there on that one short block.

Right up the hill behind our back yard, there sat Frankie Fontaine, whose place in the world we didn't understand at the time. After we moved to California, he hit it very big as Crazy Guggenheim on the Jackie Gleason show, with several albums as a singer thrown in.

He must have known our father from vaudeville and burlesque. His New York Times obituary, at age 58, included such background as this:

Although he grew upon in show business—his Fontaine grandfather was a Ringling Brothers circus strong man and his mother a trapeze artist, while his father Ray Fontaine and his mother Anna McCarthy had a vaudeville act—he himself was first and foremost a family man. He toured for two years with the Vaughn Monroe band and moved easily into radio comedy and a series of Hollywood films in the early 1950's.

Just before he turned 17, he married his childhood sweetheart Alma Clair Waltham and went right to work as an all‐purpose singer‐dancer‐comedian in Boston area supper clubs. After Pearl Harbor he spent three years in the Army, appearing in service shows and turning an occasional ‘penny in off‐post clubs to support the growing family.

He toured for two years with the Vaughn Monroe band and moved easily into radio comedy and a series of Hollywood films in the early 1950's...

It seems that our father would have known him, but we never heard about that.

Our father was 65 when we were born. As a young man, he apparently brought the Nightingales to the Old Howard.

One of the Nightingales later said, in the well-written memoir Harpo Speaks, that he got his first (unintentional) laugh right there on that "famous" stage.

It was the sacred and the profane in and around the Mystic School of that otherwise admittedly boring era! Professor Dennett was a good person who wrote a whole storeroom of books. His sister was our grade school pal until we moved across town right before sixth grade.

Cable news crowded philosophy out at the start of this glorious weekend. Maybe Paula was right all along. We simply can't have nice things!

That said, was Kant a ball of linguistic illusion? Assiduously, we've reported, and now you'll have to decide.

Also this rumination: We have one more post about Jesse Watters (Red) and Nicolle Wallace (Blue) and the original Juror #2. Our question:

Can you believe the things you get told, even by those in your clan?

SUNDAY: Something we read in (today's?) New York Times!

SUNDAY, APRIL 20, 2024

Donald Trump's Trial and American Journalism: Opening statements will be made tomorrow!

That said:

This very morning, we've been reading the Today's Paper site at the New York Times. As part of what we would regard as a comically tunnel-visioned Blue America Exclusive editorial, the editorial board—headline included—actually told us this:

Donald Trump and American Justice

[...]

[T]he opening days of the trial, devoted to jury selection, have already demonstrated the great care and respect with which everyone involved in the trial, except for Mr. Trump, has treated the process. Joshua Steinglass, a member of the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, told potential jurors on Tuesday that the case “has nothing to do with personal politics.”

“We don’t suggest you need to have been living under a rock for the last eight years, or the last 30 years,” he said. “We don’t expect you not to have heard about this, or not to have discussed this case with friends. What we do need is for you to keep an open mind.”

Dozens of potential jurors took those instructions seriously and admitted they could not be impartial. One man was excused from service after telling the judge that it was “going to be hard for me to be impartial,” since many of his family members and friends were Republicans. Justice Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing the trial, excused him, as other potential jurors stepped up. So far, seven jurors have been seated. At least two potential jurors were dismissed by the judge because of social media posts.

"So far, seven jurors have been seated?"

Seriously though, folks! In a long editorial listed online, this very morning, as part of Today's Paper, that's what the editors said.

Now for the rest of the story:

A date on the editorial tracks it to last Wednesday—to April 17, 2024. Presumably, the editorial appeared online at that time.

At that time, the passage in question would have been accurate. Today, four days later, the passage in question is clownishly out of date.

Even fuller disclosure! According to the online presentation, "A version of this article appears in print on April 21, 2024, Section SR, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Donald Trump And American Justice." 

That would be today. "A version of" that editorial appears in today's print editions.

We don't have today's print edition. Is that clownishly outdated material sitting in print even today? Can that passage possibly be sitting there in print?

We have no immediate way of knowing. A question does come to mind:

This trial will be an extremely important event. Everybody makes mistakes, but our anthropological question is this:

Does anything rattle the cages of these upper-class journalists in such a way as to force them, as upscale journalists, to make their way into the light?

Seven jurors have been selected. Opening statements tomorrow!