A while back, Pamela Paul wrote about something that should be so fundamentally obvious as to require neither explanation nor justification. Actors act.

Adrian Lester, a British actor from Birmingham and the son of two immigrants from Jamaica, was nominated last week for a Tony Award for his performance in “The Lehman Trilogy” as Emanuel Lehman, one of the German-born Jewish founders of the fallen investment behemoth Lehman Brothers. Lester, like the other actors in the three-man play, takes on several parts, including female characters and at one point, a thumb-sucking toddler.

There has been no outcry about a British actor of African descent playing a German Jew . . . And why should there have been? It’s called acting.

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In the aftermath of the overwhelming recall vote of Frisco DA Chesa Boudin, progressive activists have argued vehemently that the voters were wrong. They bring up crime stats. They compare San Francisco with other cities and states where tough-on-crime prosecutors are in office and Republicans in control to show that the “explanations” are false, promoted by conservative media like the New York Times propagating lies and fear to mislead the public.

In other words, there is no lesson to be learned and this was just some outrageous manipulated distortion of public understanding by the hard right that proves nothing more than how evil the right is and how they merely need to work harder to thwart the evil right. Continue reading →

The term “independent film” evokes one of two images in my head. The first involves pretentious art-house movies that pander to pseudo intellectuals who turn their noses up at anything released by a big studio. The other is the schlocky, campy horror films created by Lloyd Kaufman’s Troma Studios.

That’s what makes WJHC-AM such a refreshing change of pace in movies today: it’s original, it doesn’t take itself seriously, and it’s not another fucking superhero movie. Continue reading →

In 1996, SDNY Judge Harold Baer caused a shitstorm when he held that not only was it not suspicious when a black or Hispanic guy ran from, rather than complied with, a cop, but the only reasonable thing to do.

Running away from cops is what any reasonable black guy would do if he doesn’t want to kiss concrete that day.  Flight isn’t just what “guilty” people do, but what sane people do as well.

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Tonight, the House of Representatives January 6 Committee will go prime time in its effort to provide a compelling TV viewing experience. Why?

What is the Jan. 6 committee for? Committee members and Democratic operatives have been telling reporters what they hope to achieve with the hearings that begin Thursday evening. My Times colleagues Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater wrote an article with the headline, “Jan. 6 Hearings Give Democrats a Chance to Recast Midterm Message.” Democrats, they reported, are hoping to use the hearings to show midterm voters how thoroughly Republicans are to blame for what happened that day.

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Did you know that a mentally ill man from California traveled to the Maryland neighborhood of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to kill him? By now, you probably do, or at least  you’ve heard passing mention of it. It’s not as if he succeeded and a justice was assassinated.

Simi Valley resident Nicholas Roske, 26, called  911 to say he was suicidal and planned to kill Kavanaugh. He had a Glock 17 pistol, ammunition, a knife, zip ties, pepper spray, duct tape. He made clear his purpose and his reasoning. Continue reading →

Of all places, San Francisco, where people trip over each other to be ever-more-progressive and empathetic, Kathy Boudin’s little boy was recalled from his office of district attorney. Why? What does this mean? How could this happen?

The vote wasn’t close. Chesa Boudin was crushed, 60%-40%, which was in most ways shocking as he did pretty much what he told the people he was going to do when they elected him. And aside from property crimes and perceptions, it wasn’t turning out terrible. There was no huge spike in violence, and the increase in murders in Frisco weren’t as bad as many other places, particularly those where the district attorney couldn’t even spell progressive, no less be one. Continue reading →

Having never been elected governor, or indeed being known outside upstate Erie County, New York’s default governor, Kathy Hochul, is desperately trying to create the impression that she deserves the party’s nomination as the faux-incumbent in the upcoming gubernatorial primary by trying to turn Buffalo to her advantage.

First, there are the ten new anti-gun bills signed into law in reaction to the horrific Buffalo racist mass murder, as if New York’s gun laws weren’t already among the most restrictive in the nation and still failed to prevent the tragedy. Then this. Continue reading →

Maud Maron was a career public defender with the Legal Aid Society and, as one might expect, quite progressive in her leanings. But what she was not, as became fashionable on the fringe, was “anti-racist.” This was reason enough for LAS and the Black Attorneys of Legal Aid to attack, and claim she could not be a competent public defender as she wasn’t dedicated to the cause.

The mandate is a simple one. To be anti-racist, to dismantle racism here at LAS, and in every organization, we must all recognize that white supremacy drives every policy and law, every opportunity and every advantage. For those of us who are white, it is a recognition that power and privilege has been granted merely because we are white. While you have dedicated your life to public interest, you cannot do this work effectively and fully unless and until you face that reality and own that you are part of the problem.

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As David Bernstein notes, the four months it took for Georgetown Law to “investigate” Ilya Shapiro’s two twits was longer than most Supreme Court nomination hearings, excluding Merrick Garland since he was never given a hearing. Ilya called the twits “inartful,” which they certainly were, but “reckless” would be a better characterization, which is what I called them.

Could it have really taken four months to “investigate” two twits? Of course not. Perhaps the expectation was that the flames of social media seeking to burn Shapiro at the stake would die down, maybe even flame out. Perhaps they could have come up with some other way to graciously remove Georgetown Law Center from the bullseye of woke outrage without having to court disaster from the unduly passionate children while recognizing that pretty much everyone with the intellectual age of greater than 12 condemned Georgetown Law’s suspending Ilya. Academic freedom was very much on the line here, as was the realization that hypocrisy would eventually serve to eat them all if legal academics didn’t draw a line. Continue reading →