I can still remember the first time I read the “looks like me” trope. It was from a guy on twitter, Anil Dash, who had a huge following for reasons that eluded me, and was attacking J.K. Rowling for not having written a character in the Harry Potter series who “looked like” Dash’s kid. I responded, “so write a book and make the characters whoever the hell you want.” How was it Rowling’s problem that her characters didn’t look like Dash’s kid?

But Kwame Anthony Appiah makes a more astute point. What does it mean to “look like me”?

The actor Eva Longoria, who appears in the film “Dora and the Lost City of Gold,” in which the principals are played by Latinx actors, has said she had to take the part because of what the film represented “for my community and for people who look like me.”

Continue reading →

A question posed: Most of this morning was spent writing a post about the question of whether it’s time to separate the “T” in LGBTQ. The issue is overwhelmingly mired in simplistic social justice dogma, making it impossible to “have a conversation” without invoking the outrage of the mob.

This comes as a by-product of the Democratic candidates forum on LGBTQ rights. Have we matured enough to have a serious discussion? Probably not, but if people care about doing what we can to end discrimination against both gay and transgender people, then we need to recognize that they present different issues and problems. Are we ready for this? Will I get ripped to shreds for my heresy? Do I need that aggravation? Continue reading →

She was coming off a 14-hour shift as a Dallas police officer. He was minding his own business in his own apartment, going about his life until she took it from him.

A white off-duty police officer who lived in Unit 1378 — directly below Mr. Jean — claimed that she mistakenly entered the wrong apartment after returning home from her 14-hour shift and believed Mr. Jean, who is black, was an intruder. Officer Amber R. Guyger, 30, fired her service weapon twice, striking him once in the torso.

Botham Jean was in his apartment when some random woman entered and “commanded” him to do something. It’s unclear what she claims to have commanded of Jean, but she says he ignored her. Of course he did, because he was in his own apartment and she was some crazy intruder. And she claims, now that she’s going to trial for murder, that she made a mistake of fact, thinking that he was in her apartment, which was one floor below, and he was the intruder. Texas has a very broad Castle Doctrine, and with two bullets from her service weapon, Botham Jean was dead in his own apartment. Oops, her mistake. Continue reading →

It’s become commonplace in the start-up business world to provide certain office perks for employees, such as healthy nut and grain bars, dipped in chocolate to kill the vitamins, or the Millennial version of Old Miss Frothingslosh, the stale pale ale with the foam on the bottom. It keeps employees at work and caters to their fond memories of mommy bringing Cheetos to them while they sat on the basement couch playing Mortal Kombat. Good times.

But do something nice and, naturally, it’s problematic.

I run a small but growing start-up and employ many young female employees. As is standard for the start-up world, we buy kitchen items for our staff, including snacks, beer and wine, paper towels and facial tissues. We have a board in the break area that we use to remind me what items we are getting low on.

My employees keep putting feminine sanitary items on that board. I quizzed building maintenance and found that these items are for sale in all the ladies’ restrooms for 25 cents each. Should I be buying these items with corporate money, and how can I justify it one way or the other?

— Atlanta

Continue reading →

It took the jury all of 26 minutes to return its verdict. Not guilty.

A six-person jury found Jonathan Vanderhagen not guilty Thursday following a three-day trial in 41B District Court on a charge of malicious use of a telecommunications device for several Facebook posts last July regarding family Judge Rachel Rancilio of Macomb County Circuit Court in Mount Clemens.

Vanderhagen was held on half a million dollars bail for one count of the misdemeanor charge of malicious use of telecommunication services stemming from his Facebook posts about the death of his son. Continue reading →

The Niskanen Center used to be a libertarian think tank, until it decided manifest destiny applied. With that, the very smart Will Wilkinson took to the papers to argue against “assault weapons.” Fair enough, and there is no doubt that the matter of gun control is a huge issue in the country. Wilkinson is hardly the only smart guy who has taken the position that semiautomatic guns are a blight on America, a weapon that can no longer be tolerated and, all other issues aside, must be stopped.

But how his argument is framed is a problem.

Why an Assault Weapons Ban Hits Such a Nerve With Many Conservatives

The premise of Trumpist populism is that the political preferences of a shrinking minority of citizens matter more than democracy.

Continue reading →

Cathy Young took a deep dive into the Yale story of “napping while black,” seized upon as a battle in the war against racism at Yale. It revealed a few things of social significance about the outrage industry’s use of whatever fodder it could get its hands on, facts and nuance be damned. What it also revealed was how it manufactured villains, even though they may well be the victim of the story if the facts were known. Sarah Braasch may be such a victim.

Braasch sought the body cam video from the Yale Police Department to prove her case, to vindicate her actions, to end the concerted effort to destroy her for the sake of the social justice narrative.

I had spoken with the Ombudsman at the CT FOIA Commission assigned to my docket, and she had expressed her belief that she would be able to get Yale to release the YPD body camera footage to the public, which would have precluded the need for me to attend a hearing in Hartford on October 3^rd. Continue reading →

It wasn’t remotely surprising that right out of the box, someone like Michelle Dauber would find some way to spin it.

The legal profession does not care about sexual assault and lawyers will protect each other and the profession pretty much no matter what.

The problem was that she was constrained to attack an unattackable voice, the Notorious RBG. Obviously, it couldn’t be that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a rape apologist or misogynist, as her feminist bona fides, not to mention intelligence and legal acumen, soared so far above the puny Dauber’s that it was untouchable. So she aimed her arrows at lawyers, generally. And as one might expect of a non-lawyer Stanford lawprof, she missed the target completely. Continue reading →

The Pantheon of female comedians runs from the indomitable Carol Burnett and Phyllis Diller  to the banal but foul Samantha Bee. It used to include Sarah Silverman, but her name can no longer be mentioned. And then there’s Maeve Higgins. “Who,” you ask? You don’t know her name because she’s been canceled, but she would have to matter before anyone would bother to cancel her. And she doesn’t matter, except to the New York Times.

I’ve been doing standup comedy for 14 years, and at some point, I came to despise it. It made me feel bad about myself, mostly. The thing I find hardest is the bullying nature, the punching down. I’ve heard comics onstage mock women and gay people and black people in a variety of ways that still manage to say nothing new. I’ve sat in grimy green rooms and witnessed the ego bloat that comes with applause and money, the rewards that come from maintaining the status quo. It’s gross. But I stay for the rare and magic flashes of connection.

Continue reading →

A comment by Skink the other day reminded me of a guest post that never happened. Out of the blue, I heard from a lawprof friend who sought to push me to write more about what was happening internally within the New York Legal Aid Society. I was sent a bunch of internal emails which were graphic and appalling.*

I replied that I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. If there were problems at LAS, then someone from LAS should come forward to say so, to tell the story of what the problems are. Not only wasn’t it my place to “explain” their view of internal problems, but enough already. Was there not a person in all of the Legal Aid Society with the balls to come forward to speak out?

At that point, there was no one willing to come forward to tell what was really happening at LAS other than my dear friend, Appellate Squawk, whose travails at the storming of her blog by the townsfolk carrying their pitchforks and torches were well documented. Later, another brave soul who showed the fortitude to speak publicly was Cynthia Taylor, but she was suing LAS which allowed public defenders to claim her words were tainted by self-interest. Continue reading →