#RIPCommunity

In May 2011, I entered the hospital with constipation, found out I was on the verge of dying, went into surgery and had my guts opened up. I woke up in extreme pain and deep humiliation from the colostomy bag I was suddenly, unexpectedly (though temporarily) forced to wear. The combination of events sent me into a fairly deep — and, I think, understandable — depression.

I remember the first time I laughed. It was that Thursday in the hospital; I was to leave the next day. I was resting with a TV that didn't actually offer audio for all the channels it showed — NBC was among the silent offerings. Still, I tuned into Community that night, which was ending its second season.

And that night, I laughed for the first time since the surgery. It had everything to do with this moment:

That's the character Troy, popping up out of a garbage can and seeing his friend Abed for the first time this episode, set during an Old West-themed paintball game. There was something about the look on Donald Glover's face, the pure joy of recognition, that elicited deep and involuntary laughs from me.

Then the pain took over. And I wept.

The first two years of Community's run — long thought by many observers to be the show's finest — coincided with two of the toughest years of my adult life. My illness occurred during the second year; I lost my job the first. I felt haunted by failure. Community was one of rare pleasures I knew during that time. Among the best? My then-toddler son slipping into bed with me on Friday mornings when I was still in too much pain to do anything but recover, so that we could watch the latest episode together on the iPad. He can still sing the theme song.

It's just a show. And what Community meant to me is probably not what Community meant to you, if you watched it at all. We all encounter art —even silly, disposable, pop art —with the baggage we bring to it. I brought a little extra to this show; and I'm sad to see it go.

Donald Sterling Doesn't Just Have a Race Problem. He Has a Class Problem.

A lot has been made about the comments (allegedly) made by Clippers owner Donald Sterling about race. But I think his comments about class are also kind of interesting. Here he (allegedly) is, talking about Clippers' players:

The woman reminded him that the Clippers roster is primarily black. 

“I support them and give them food and clothes and cars and houses,” said the man alleged to be Sterling. “Who gives it to them? Does someone else give it to them?” 

“Who makes the game?” he continued. “Do I make the game, or do they make the game? Is there 30 owners, that created the league?”

And hey, has there ever been a more perfect example of capital's view of labor?

Me? I'm pretty sure the league doesn't exist at all without the efforts of its workers. People buy tickets to watch the players. People buy the jerseys of players. Networks pay hundreds of millions of dollars to show players playing on TV. The owner, when he's seen during these broadcasts, is seen for a few moments if at all.

In other words: The players, the workers, generate whatever monetary value the team has to Sterling. Yet he sees himself as the provider! He gives them food and clothes and cars and houses. He makes the game.

I'm not being Marxist here: The NBA isn't a global phenomenon without owners to organize teams and an administrative office that exploits the game for maximum exposure and popularity. But the product, at the end of the day, isn't just the fruit of the players' labors — it is the players labors.

Thing is: Donald Sterling appears to be an exceptional racist. I don't think he's an exceptional captalist. He really thinks he makes the league. That should probably offend the player almost as much as his (alleged) racism.

Another Round on Self-Evident Truths

At Power Line, friend (and nemesis!) Steve Hayward replies to my suggestion that he reads rather too much into President Obama's second inaugural by using rather too little of it. Steve originally used just a few words from this line of that speech—

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth. 

—to suggest that Obama's belief system is (ahem) less than fully American. "May be self-evident" suggests residual disbelief in the proposition. I suggest the fuller passage indicates the president's unmitigated acceptance of said proposition.

Steve replies:

No sensible person disputes that we work out our ideas in space and time with great difficulty, but Obama’s use of “may” is extremely telling, like the academics I meet who unfailingly say “Lincoln was right—for his time.”  What about our time, today?  What about Lincoln’s view that the self-evident truths of the Declaration were true everywhere and always, as Jefferson put it?  I’d bet a lot of money that Obama does not believe that.  Does Joel really believe differently about Obama’s deepest philosophical views?  Why would Obama believe differently? 

Since my original critique of Steve's post was founded on the idea that getting inside the president's head—any president—is a fool's errand, I'm going to try to decline speculation about "Obama's deepest philosophical views." I don't know what they are; I can only know what he says and what he does.

Getting Inside Obama's Head: Steven Hayward Edition.

I think most pundits do their worst work when they play armchair psychologist; instead of assessing what (say) a president is doing on its own terms, they try to guess at the man's motivations and hidden beliefs—often in venal terms, if they disagree with that president's acts.

My friend and occasional nemesis Steven Hayward, I think, gets caught in this trap in his latest column for Forbes, in which he speculates about why the president isn't showing up for this week's anniversary commemorations of the Battle of Gettysburg, decides that the president just doesn't believe in America the way the rest of us do.

One reason may be that Obama has to carefully avoid associating himself fully with Lincoln’s view about the centrality of what Lincoln called, at Gettysburg, “the proposition” that “all men are created equal.” Obama omitted this famous line from the Declaration of Independence in his famous Philadelphia speech about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy in 2008. He did finally quote the Declaration’s “self-evident truth” in his second inaugural address earlier this year, but then added in a revealing line, “while these truths may be self-evident. . .” 

May be self-evident? This is what intellectual poker players would call a revealing “tell.” If hooked up to a polygraph, Obama would likely have to confess to the modern liberal view that individual rights come not from our natural equality as human beings, but from a positive grant from government. The redistributive welfare state depends on this principle for its legitimacy, as does today’s “progressive” insistence on dividing people into groups according to skin color or gender or sexual preference, and assigning hierarchies of legal rights accordingly. Much of modern liberal philosophy depends on turgid obfuscation to disguise the fact that it is at odds with Lincoln’s understanding of equal rights.

I can argue another time with Steve about the foundations of the legitimacy of the welfare state. But the problem here is that he truncates the president's inaugural speech—by a punishing amount—in order to get it to "reveal" what he sees in it. Here's what the president actually said:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth. The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a Republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.

For a black man born before the Civil Rights Act, before the marriage of his parents would have even been considered legal, it must be "self-evident" that it has taken the work of many people to secure the promises that the Founders said were owed to all of us.

More to the point, one only has to read Obama's entire sentence to realize that he explicitly affirmed what Steve says he didn't.  Steve's a skilled polemicist, and I realize that much of the writing he does (at least in blog form) often amounts to playing "got your nose" with liberals. Still, I think his attempt to psychoanalyze the president drifted into actual (and because I like him, I'm sure inadvertent) misrepresentation of the president's words.

John Yoo: Still wrong on the Constitution

Please oh please oh please world, remember this is how John Yoo* views constitutional questions: With the Constitution being secondary to whatever warmaking policy imperative Yoo is in favor of this week.

The Constitution vests power in Congress to authorize war, the executive to, uh, execute it—and, it's generally understood, that power allows the executive to act with dispatch when an attack has been made upon the United States and its forces. Such is not the case here.

Tom Woods (who is almost certainly more conservative than I am) writes: "In conformity with this understanding, George Washington’s operations on his own authority against the Indians were confined to defensive measures, conscious as he was that the approval of Congress would be necessary for anything further. 'The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress,' he said, 'therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure.'" 

Seems clear. Choosing between Yoo's interpretations and George Washington's example, I'll stick with George Washington.

* I know we've moved on from the George W. Bush administration. But Yoo's work in the Office of Legal Counsel, I think, opened the door to scary possibilities from wartime American governments. He'll probably continue to be  my bugaboo.

Being poor makes you more poor (An ongoing series)

Financial stress may hit your brain and wallet: "Being short on cash may make you a bit slower in the brain, a new study suggests. 

People worrying about having enough money to pay their bills tend to lose temporarily the equivalent of 13 IQ points, scientists found when they gave intelligence tests to shoppers at a New Jersey mall and farmers in India. 

The idea is that financial stress monopolizes thinking, making other calculations slower and more difficult, sort of like the effects of going without sleep for a night."

Not much to add to this, except that I've seen other studies that suggest the stresses of being poor do hurt one's decision-making capabilities. Expecting people to "bootstrap up" out of their circumstances thus isn't always realistic.

Pennsylvania governor: gay couples barred from marriage 'like 12-year-olds' | World news | theguardian.com

Pennsylvania governor: gay couples barred from marriage 'like 12-year-olds' | World news | theguardian.com: "Marriage licenses given to same-sex couples in Pennsylvania are invalid because they were barred from marrying in the same way as 12-year-olds, attorneys for the Republican governor said on Wednesday.

Tom Corbett's administration has filed a lawsuit seeking to block same-sex marriage licenses in suburban Philadelphia, where Montgomery County register of wills D Bruce Hanes has issued more than 150 to gay and lesbian couples since July 24.

State attorneys said in a court filing on Wednesday the gay marriage licenses have no "value or legitimacy" and can't be defended in court. They compared gay and lesbian couples to children, who can't marry because a 1996 law says marriage is between a man and a woman.

"Had the clerk issued marriage licenses to 12-year-olds in violation of state law, would anyone seriously contend that each 12-year-old … is entitled to a hearing on the validity of his 'license'?" the state wrote, according to a story on the Philly.com news website."

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