Lincoln/Coverdale

Like almost all, if not all, law students, my first year included reading many opinions penned by Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner. I get a kick out of Posner and when I’m bored, I check out the blog that he writes with University of Chicago Professor Gary Becker: The Becker-Posner Blog. While reading this post on health care reform and obesity, I came across this passage:

I do not think that government should regulate behavior on the premise that it knows better what makes people happy than people themselves do; but controlling external costs is or should be an uncontroversial governmental function.

I’m not 100% convinced that I would put this bumper sticker on my car, but I like the sound of it. I certainly agree that the government should not be in the business of determining what makes people happy. And assuming that “controlling” does necessarily mean “eliminating,” I think I can agree with the second clause.

Via Andrew Sullivan, I was lead to Adam Serwer’s post about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a professor at Harvard. This quote struck me:

What really disturbs me though, is the fact that Gates’ own neighbor didn’t recognize him. Regardless of who is ultimately at fault in the encounter between Gates and Sgt. Crowley, the most frightening thing is that a Harvard professor could be mistaken for a burglar by his own neighbor.

Before moving on to the next sentence, which follows below, I was struck by the use of the word “frightening.” My impression is that not knowing your neighbor is sad; and not knowing that your neighbor is a professor at Harvard is even more sad. Frightening, however, does not immediately leap to mind. Serwer goes on to say,

I’m not ascribing malice here — it’s the nature of race that people react to it without forethought — but the idea that a black man can be mistaken for a criminal trying to enter his own house in his own neighborhood should remind us all that we’re hardly living in a post-racial paradise.

Without knowing more about the neighbor and his relationship with Prof. Gates, I cannot say whether the neighbor’s judgment was or was not based on race. To me, it seems plausible that the failure of this neighbor to recognize Prof. Gates has something to do with the fact that some people just don’t know their neighbors that well.

This last sentence could just as likely have read:

I’m not ascribing malice here — it’s the nature of today’s society that neighbors often do not develop strong friendships — but the idea that a man can be mistaken for a criminal trying to enter his own house in his own neighborhood should remind us that it is important to get to know one’s neighbors.

I’m not trying to be flippant, or to claim that this story does not involve race. Perhaps I don’t have all the information and this neighbor is a known unrepentant racist. Absent such information, I think that it is unfair to ascribe the neighbor’s action in calling the police to a subconscious racial judgment.

A couple weeks ago, I sent an email to several members of the Fort Worth City Council. I just received an email from Councilman Frank Moss (well, actually from an aide of his) containing a statement expressing support for an investigation of the events at the Rainbow Lounge.

I also received this press release:

Chief Appoints Interim Liaison

Today during the City of Fort Worth Pre-Council meeting Fort Worth Police Chief Jeffrey W. Halstead announced his appointment of an interim liaison to the Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transgender community. Officer Sara Straten stepped forward after learning of the chief’s request for a volunteer to serve the GLBT community in a liaison role. Officer Straten is a 17-year veteran and has served in previous assignments such as patrol, North Division Crime Response Team, East Division Zero Tolerance Unit, the Gang Unit, and the Training Division as a background investigator. She is currently assigned to the North Division as a Neighborhood Police Officer (NPO) serving the Fossil Creek, Summerfields, and Arcadia Park neighborhoods. Her duties will now include being a liaison to the GLBT community which means attending meetings, events, functions, etc… and being a direct conduit to the chief’s office.

Officer Straten will act in an interim capacity enabling the police department to evaluate and search for possible funding for a full-time position at which time Chief Halstead will seek input from various community leaders to ensure their involvement in the selection process.

“We’ve acted with urgency to quickly bridge the communication gap between the police department and the GLBT community. Our intent is to move forward in establishing a new relationship that consists of mutual understanding and respect.” Chief Halstead

Officer Straten will be available at tonight’s city council meeting to answer questions.

Time will tell if this is real progress, but for now, it’s something.

EDIT: The original statement from Frank Moss was an improperly released rough draft. The link above now points to a corrected version.

Kevin, the wife, and I went to see Transformers 2 last night at the Henry Ford IMAX theater. It was horrible: the story was ridiculous, the dialogue was cheesy, and a list always needs a third thing. Now that I have that out of the way, here’s why I loved it:

• There were giant robots.
• They turned into vehicles.
• The robots never stopped fighting.
• The Constructicons combined to form Devastator.
• If you pretend it’s just a live action cartoon, the non sequiturs (such as walking into the Steven R. Udvar-Hazy Center annex to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and walking out into a desert filled with retired military planes) aren’t nearly as distracting.
• Michael Bay’s “vision” did not include a pesky plot.
• Optimus Prime combined with parts from Jetfire to become an unmitigated kicker of ass.
• Deep Roy, the Ooompa-Loompa from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, had a bit role.
• The robots never stopped fighting.

Awesome. If you’ve never seen him, check this out.

EDIT: Great news: “Inge also said Thursday he will compete in Monday’s Home Run Derby.”

This story left me a bit stunned:

The Detroit 911 operator who was convicted of willful neglect after she dismissed a 5-year-old boy’s emergency call about his unconscious mom is back on the job.

Sharon Nichols returned to work on Wednesday after an arbitrator decided she should be reinstated without back pay or retroactive benefits, police spokesman John Roach said Thursday.

In February 2006, Nichols disregarded Robert Turner’s 911 call that his mother had collapsed because she thought it was a joke. Another operator gave the boy a hard time when he called back hours later, but eventually dispatched police. Officers found 46-year-old Sherrill Turner dead.

Nichols did not do her job and possibly contributed to the death of Sherrill Turner. She did not just perform at the low end of the acceptable scale. According to a press release from the Wayne County Prosecutors Office, she “failed to adhere to the pattern of questioning designed to evaluate a call and she failed to treat the call as an emergency.” Unless Detroit could find no one else to take Nichols’s place, I cannot understand why she will be back on the job. I see it this way: if Nichols tried to get a job with me, I’d call her previous employer and ask under what conditions she had been let go. After finding out that she completely failed to do her job and this failure may have contributed to the death of someone, I’d move on to the next resume.

I don’t know how I forgot to mention music. When meeting a black person, I often… That is, white people often mention that one Hip-Hop song (Rollout) or artist (Ludacris) that they like. Just admit that your music world has been on life support since Slash left Guns N’ Roses. Slash transcended race way before Obama.

My wife, finder of all things internetty, just sent me this article about a private swim club that kicked out a group of black children. John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club, said that “[t]here was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion . . . and the atmosphere of the club.”

Although private clubs legally can discriminate on the basis of race, I wonder if anything can be made of the fact that the club claims to have an open membership. Not to mention that the children were part of a summer camp program that had purchased a membership to the club. These children thought they were going for a refreshing swim on a hot summer day. Instead, they got to hear one woman say, “I’m scared they might do something to my child.” Like what? Play with them?

Maybe this woman fears that by playing with black children, her child will see that people are people and that a policy of racial exclusion harms both the excluder and the excluded. Maybe she fears that her child would grow up and not see black people as “other,” but as people who laugh and play as children and who do their best to get by as adults. You know, just like people with other types of pigment in their skin.

If people like this woman have their way, her children will not encounter another black person until they enter college or the workforce, at which time they will be uncomfortable and rack their brains to remember quotes from stand-up routines by Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock. You know, to show that even though they’ve never had an intimate conversation with a black person, they’ve been paying attention to black culture from the outside. In an effort to bond, they will talk about Tiger and the Williams sisters and pretend they like the NBA as much as the NCAA.

It’s kind of pathetic (and I say this as someone who has gone there), but I guess it’s an effort at trying to understand someone who is “different.” I wonder if a reason for this is that white people are so insulated as to think that black people are literally different. Different in such a way that the only way to have a conversation is to talk about “black things.”

I’ve never met a black person who does something analogous. No Steve Martin quotes; no NASCAR pretense. (And to make it clear, this is not because I’ve never met a black person.) In contrast to white people, maybe black people realize that it is condescending and causes discomfort to pretend to be interested in things. Maybe they realize this because they often are on the receiving end of it.

I’m not quite sure how to respond to this evidence of Camero and Firebird enthusiasm in Tehran. I wonder if any Iranians, like many of my high school classmates, posed with their cars in their yearbook photos. Assuming they have yearbooks. The fact that they have American muscle cars leads me to believe that yearbooks are not out of the question.

In a post tagged as “America’s Biggest Asshole,” Wonkette goes a little bit crazy denouncing Ron Paul, the sole Representative who failed to back a “harmless” House Resolution “[e]xpressing support for all Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties, and rule of law, and for other purposes.”

Wonkette asks what might be the single most disingenuous question one could ask about the Constitution: “[W]here exactly in your pocket Constitution does it say the United States can’t give cost-free moral support to democratic movements?” The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t say this. And it doesn’t have to. The Constitution enumerates the powers of the federal government, which implies that actions not based on those powers are prohibited. Is it harmless to support “cost-free moral support”? Probably. Do Congress’s enumerated powers contain the power to pass harmless measures? No.

And if I may digress… Who gets to decide what is harmless, anyway? I’m pretty sure it’s not gossipy bloggers.

I’m probably just being a snotty law student who just finished taking Constitutional Law. But at least I didn’t call Wonkette a Senile Fucktard.