Response to Question on Experience

This was a good question posted as a comment to my last posting:

"I have posed this question to various friends and colleagues of mine who are in academia: At what point does the machine become so dysfunctional that the experience machine no longer operates? Is there a breaking po tint, or canhere be perpetual mediocrity?"

For what it's worth, I think the experience machine for students will eventually hit the wall. The student demand for high curves is a function of risk aversion. Even the best students want the curve to make sure there is a safety net in case they fall short. Eventually I think the market will force them to distinguish themselves. They will understand that part of the reason they cannot find jobs is that they refuse to take the risk of a grading system that will allow them to shine. For example, when I give a B, it really means anything from a to a B+. I think they may come to realize that the "nurturing," lecturing, multiple choice testing teacher may not be preparing them for life after law school.

For faculty, I think the machine will never break. As standards slip there will be new rationalizations. If all else fails one can stay in the experience machine by reciprocal citations, self promotion and creating yet a another top 10 list. The point is that any threat to the experience machine is dealt with by modifying it and unlike the students there is no outside mechanism to force reevaluation. It is stunning to me how malleable the machine is. The other day I happened upon a popular teacher's power point. The entire power point had to have been prepared for form not substance. I cannot go into here but it was comparable to a slogan. No doubt students love it and the administration loves it when the students love it almost without regard for whatever the "it" is. The "it will move as necessary.

The Experience Machine for Students and Professors

Robert Nozick is often credited with the the idea of the experience machine. The question he posed was would you enter a machine in which you were always happy. Your subjective reality would be wonderful and you would not know it is all induced by something other than your actual existence. I think Decarte thought of this earlier and, if course, The Matrix made it into an entire movie.

The question can be applied to law schools and students. For the students it comes in the form of the curve. As one of mine put it recently "Don't worry about class, there is always the curve." In short, the curve will make you feel subjectively better off but you may be doing miserably. For students it is hard because they cannot stay in the experience machine forever. They take the Bar Exam and some who were happy find they were in the experience machine of the curve. Law students demand the machine and faculty are happy to oblige but it is not their "real" reality.

Law faculty are far better off. They can enter the experience machine and never emerge. Most enter it at birth when born into privilege. And then comes the elite line up of Schools that are popular in large part because they make students feel better simply be being there. Clearly, these days there is no evidence that the students actually emerge with a better education than those who attended non experience machine schools. Then there is law professordom and a life time in the experience machine. Tenure assures a steady income for life and once hired not getting tenure is an uphill battle, especially if you are sociable and sing with the choir with respect to what today's "liberal" issues even though one must be very conservative to do so. By conservative I mean close-minded and intolerant. The main requirement of staying in the professorial experience machine is not to interrupt anyone else's blissful experience machine existence. Do not evaluate, do not suggest improvement, do not question.

Law School Risk Factor Redux

(I found this quiz at WebMD-LawSchool.com and am passing it along for a second time. I'd like to report that my law school's risk factors have improved significantly!)

It's the beginning of the year and time to take an inventory of your law school's health. Give your school a "5" if the description is dead on and a "0" if it is completely inapplicable.

1. There is a critical mass of faculty for whom the ends nearly always justify the means. The “ends” can be anything from personnel to program decisions.

2. The convenience of faculty is always an important consideration in faculty votes and administrative decision making, sometimes to the detriment of stakeholders (students, donors and taxpayers).

3. It is difficult to discontinue or even to objectively evaluate existing programs without it becoming "personal."

4. There is a great deal of gossip. It comes to you even if you are not a “carrier.”

5. There is a solid core of “Making Nice, Knowing Better, Doing Nothing” people. These are the colleagues who express the right ideas – when they express at all – but are AWOL when critical decision points arise that could send the school in a more positive direction.

6. Your administration, when it is internally active at all, is principally concerned with putting out fires but only those that threaten the administration itself.

7. There are few if any norms about making up missed classes, rigor in the classroom, publication goals, testing practices, availability to students, etc.

8. Your dean would rather delay a hard decision or pass it onto the faculty knowing that that the School will suffer as a result. See Chen, Three Deans.

9. Tenured faculty frequently discuss controversial questions with untenured faculty and while doing so make clear their own opinions and what their expectations are.

10. Faculty tend to teach the same courses from the same books for years, maybe careers.

Add up your score.

40-50 points. Go to the Law School ER immediately. Not for your school. It left the world of the living some time ago. You, however, have a pulse. Save yourself by writing and teaching your very best and finding a hobby.

30-39 points. Your School is in critical condition but there is a chance of survival. It will be very tricky. Retirements, hiring stealth candidates, and a courageous dean are needed. Guerilla action maybe in order.

20-29 points. You have an elevated risk of law school death but it can be controlled by diet and exercise. Do not let the opportunity slip away.

10-19 points. Enjoy your law school’s good health.

0-9 points. See a physician immediately. You are delusional.

The Blindness of Law School Hiring Committees

Although the details are not evident from this short article, the idea seems to be that the grades a law student makes in school are more important than the school attended in determining career success. I mention this because I have seen first hand hiring committee's turn their noses up at a top ten grad from, say, Minnesota, in favor of a bottom of the top third or even lower -- much lower- Harvard grad. There is no way to put it other than it is an empirically unsound way to make the hiring decision. Why do they do that. Not to bore you for the 10th time, but for the most part the committees are composed of elitists and the hiring is self-referential -- they are hiring themselves or what they wannabe. So each year another batch of elite grads roles into a profession that has grown terribly stale and humorless. Plus, they are not that well educated. In fact, when I consider the interests of, let's say, an Exeter, Princeton, Harvard grad (the most elitist combo I can think of right now) I wonder what is going in in the classroom.

Could we test this. Not really. A few years ago I compared publications by elitist school grads with those of non elite schools. The problem was that once you get out of the second tier of Law Schools you are hard pressed to find any non elite grads to make the study meaningful.

Really, I think Harvard and Yale could start producing the Yugo car and half the law professors in the US would salivate to have one (especially if it came with a Harvard vanity plate). Why do I believe that? Because they already produce Yugo grads and the profs salivate.

Revisiting Caterina

This Italian movie has a wonderful and dead center take on class that repeatedly plays out in law schools. As the title suggests, it is about a young girl's problems when moving to the city. She is torn between the lefties and the righties at school. (This all takes place in Rome.) Two characters are parents of two of her school chums -- one left one right. One parent is a lefty intellectual and the other a right wing politician. At one point there is a conflict at the school and the parents are gathered together. Caterina's father, a pathetic lower middle class character who craves being recognized by the privileged, is there too. He best scene of the movie shows his awakening when he sees how close the two other parents are even though publicly they are arch enemies. What he realizes that that they are united by privilege and privilege is stronger than any professed convictions.

It is good to remember this in higher education and legal education in particular. The self anointed liberals (there are no lefties) may from time to time find conservatives to argue with. But where they are rock solid united is in their rejection of non elitists. Do not let their battles fool you. When faced with non elitists they will close ranks faster than you can say hypocrite.

White v. Black

Thanks to one of my facebook friends, I came across this dead on NYT op-ed piece today. The theme is familiar -- whites and minorities pitted against each other for the benefit of the privileged.

Democrats and the Working Class

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that read:

“A working man who votes Republican is like a chicken who likes Colonel Sanders.”

I personally think this is true but, if you live in the South and many other places as well, you know it is not a slogan that most people pay attention to.

What makes working class people vote so often for politicians who promote the interests of their bosses? So-called liberals chalk it up to racism because this helps justify their lack of interest in class issues.

I think there is a different, more subtle, explanation. For whatever reason, the “face” of the Democratic Party is one of elitists. After all, Bill Clinton tried to appoint to his cabinet Zoe Baird, half of a $600,000 a year couple who were willing to pay only $24,000 to the caretaker of her only daughter. Rock stars, movie stars, glamorous authors tend to be Democrats and behave in a way working class people regard as immoral.

The Democratic image problem seems unfair because there must be as many elitists and rule-benders among Republicans. But Republicans are perceived to be less likely to use bad language, more likely to go to church, and to listen to country music, and more likely to fly an American flag with pride: cultural mores that working class people tend to share.

But the problem is not which party has more elitists. The actual problem is two-fold. First, Democrats have become progessively less interested in class in the last 50 years. Second, even if they claim to be advocates for the "working man," they are woefully ignorant of the what it means to be a working class person in America. A law professor would have no idea, for example, what it would be like to get up at 7:00 and return home at 6:00 after a day of physical work - no leisurely visits to the faculty lounge, no extended gossip sessions, no time to go to the dentist, etc. A law professor could not conceive of living on $15.00 an hour or his/her spouse bartending nights to make ends meet or worry about the price of ground beef or deciding to eat hot dogs once a week in order to make ends meet. They tend to shudder at things blue collar.


I watch this process play out at my job. I think I am pretty good at spotting the very few working class students who filter into even a state law school. It is profiling to be sure, but they are more likely to have acne scars, poor dental work, out of date hair styles (no mullets thank God) and to be overweight. When the first “dress up” occasion is held, the men and women are more likely to look like they read “court attire” to mean “Scarface attire.”

As these people move through law school, they get a belly-full of “liberal” indoctrination that is at best class-neutral and probably anti blue collar. When it comes to research assistant positions they are befuddled by why they were not chosen and Ms. Perfect Smile is. And when profs chum it up with students, you can bet it is not with the students who have even a smidgen of working classness about them. Perhaps this is understandable: people are more comfortable around those who are like them. So much for "embracing diversity."

Who would get your vote. Someone who does not care about you but is honest about it. Or someone who claims to care but actually finds you an inconvenient reminder of his own hypocrisy?

Strategy and Volunteers: Summer Rerun

A few days ago, I wrote a blog about volunteers. It was inspired by an incident at my school that involved a person in charge of a cushy assignment “volunteering” to do the assignment himself. Here are some other examples. At my school, because we do not hire people to teach what the students need, 5 people are now teaching two large first year sections. I think when we all agreed to do it, it could be legitimately be regarded as volunteering because it looked like it would be difficult. Now a few of us have decided it is a breeze. One prep and 6 or 8 hours of your teaching obligation is done for the year – hardly anything that should create in the School a need to “compensate” us in one way or another. But a person employing the volunteer strategy will continue "I am doing you a favor" charade. I do not know if anyone is in this case.

Here is another one. In my second year of law teaching I was on an 8 person appointments committee. At our weekly meeting it was announced that the budget allowed for 6 people to go to D.C. Now we all know that profs moan and groan about going to the meat market but they really love it – be a big shot for a few days, drink, clown around. So, at the meeting the Chair asked, “Who wants to go.” Not a single hand went up. At the next meeting the Chair announced that every person on the committee had contacted him privately to “volunteer” to go. Wanting to go created no implicit debt but a “volunteer” deserves something in return.

Where is this going? Actually I know I may be manufacturing something here that does not exist at all. But, can the volunteer schitk be part of an overall pattern of professional strategic behavior? If it is, is it a law professor thing, an upper class thing or just something everyone does.

The overall strategy has three components. First is the voluteer. Second, you are always working hard and overburdened. Even if you just finished an hour of spider solitaire, webboggle, or surfing the net, when you come of your office you are in the midst of something pressing. So many things to do! Third, there is the “show no passion” strategy. Best to appear indifferent. Basic bargaining -- no one has any leverage with you when you do not care. Be sure to use words like “Aren’t you concerned about X” as opposed to “I really do not like X.”

Am I describing my school? Actually, I can only think of a few people that consistently fit the model and you would be hard pressed to convince me that my School is different from any other. Have I used these strategies? I am sure I have from time to time.

But think about the hell of keeping all of these going all the time. Such is the strategic life and my hunch is that it is a behavior found mainly among the privileged.

Bait and Switch?

If there is a theme among the many student and professor posts about law schools it is that they are involved in a bait and switch. Students are attracted by the promise of employment in high paying and exciting jobs. They then discover there are not that many jobs, they do not all pay well and they can be boring. The problem here is that law schools involved in the USN&WR game want to and do inflate their employment figures. Ironically, these misleading figure may benefit students by making their degrees seem more valuable.Just think how the students would feel if, after enrolling, a school's decided to play it straight and its ranking dropped from 30th to 50th.

Playing it straight means not hiring one's own graduates, not paying firms to hire them and not giving grants to students while working. The employment figures would drop and the School's ranking would suffer. Students would have a better idea of exactly what to expect upon graduation.

What students seem to want may be hard to achieve. I think most want the world to believe that their schools' degrees are highly valued. On the other hand, they also want to know the truth. But if the truth gets out, it undermines the first objective.

I do not know what will happen. When the market for Ph.D.s dropped several years ago, applications fell and departments got smaller. The market worked. I do not know if that was because departments did not make false claims about placements or would be applicants realized that having a Ph.D. most likely qualified you to drive a taxi.

And lurking in the background is that the students are in many respects means to the ends of law professors. Without applicants and high enrollments, teaching jobs for graduates of elite law schools would dwindle.

Finally, there is a point of view perhaps held only by me. I don't thing not finding a job means legal education is a waste. Instead I think a legal education is part of becoming a well educated person. In fact, I wish Law School administrations would stress this in their sales pitches.

The Game

In response to my blog on networking, anonymous comments as follows:

"Little and big cliques arise that tend to retard rather than advance the scholarship in that area."

One of the oddest pieces of advice I received from a law professor on trying to break into the academy was to approvingly cite influential scholars and follow up with them to create a "citation ion orgy."

As usual this "A" hits the nail on the head. It also sback a memory of riding in a car several years ago with a more senior law professor. In fact, it was one of my former professors who has done extremely well. WA bit of a mentor. We were chatting about a law professor who had been in the business about as long as I had and he observed "He really knows how to play the game." He said this with complete admiration. Playing the game meant that day's version of self promotion. For example, he might refer to a relatively modest book review in the Harvard Law Review as "my piece in Harvard." Actually today since Harvard has many law reviews this is an even more common ploy. No matter if you are in the 10th ranking specialty review you call it "my piece in Harvard."

But playing the game was so much more than just that. Today's technology means one can be a full time game player.

It reminds of a story told about Harrison Ford trying to get a job in Hollywood. Evidently he was being told why he could not succeed and the person showing him a clip of Tony Curtis playing a delivery boy. The director or agent said about Curtis, "You can just tell he is a star." Ford's reply was "I thought he was supposed to be a delivery boy."

And I thought law professors taught and wrote and did not worry about "the game." What I do not understand is why they did not go into another line of work -- business, sales, administration, politics, etc. Actually both the former professor and the young professor he admired so much did exactly that.

Summer Rerun in Honor of Futbol: Juice

One of my favorite things in Rio is the juice bars. This photo is of my personal favorite. They are on virtually every corner. Most have not just juice but what I would call diner food. Actually, I am not sure I ever ate in a diner but it is what I imagine diner food to be. Some you stand at and some have seats with tables and then some have additional tables that you can pull up to park benches on the side walk.

I never heard anyone cop an attitude at a juice bar. I never saw anyone whine at a juice bar. No one care about status. No matter who you are you get the same juice and the same seat and the same service as anyone else and no one expects special treatment.

You do not pick a juice bar on the basis of its name or the training of the cooks and juicers who work there. Performance is the only thing that counts; the better the juice, food and service, the more customers it has. As a customer, if you do not produce you get no juice, or anything else.

Law schools should operate more like juice bars.

Marti Gras in Your Mouth

Here is a dessert treat I think I invented. You'll need some angel food cake, that really good greek stype yoghurt, and sugar. Maybe some colored sprinkles.


Put a slice of angel food cake in a bowl and chop it up. Add the yogurt and mix thoroughly untill there are only chucks of the cake. Now take a bunch of turbanado or "sugar in the raw" and mix it all in. Also add a dash of colored sprinkles -- mainly for presentation purposes.

Chill and eat. Wonderful sometimes crunchy, sometimes cakey and sometimes a little tart flavours all follow one after the other. You will be smiling and reaching to make more. Eat with your eyes closed and it is even better.

Behave for success: Part 2

[A recent commentator responded to the post below with the question of whether I do any of these things. I am pretty sure that I do not. I am not as outspoken as I once was but it has nothing to do with strategic behavior designed to advance my own interests. Instead, as a friend advised me, I was just spitting into the wind.]

It's not an official term but what I use to describe those with working class backgrounds who end up in the world of academics is "socioeconomic displacement." In other words, your parents did not go to college, you are the first in the family to do so and your natural career path might be middle management somewhere. Instead you end up is a strange world. The big advantage of the displacement is to observe the behavioral traits of those born to privilege and choose whether to imitate them. If you are willing to imitate, here are some sure fire tips some of which have appeared before in this blog.

1. Be careful not to overuse "please" and "thank you." These are words of weakness. They suggest you are asking for something to which you are not entitled or have received something that was not rightfully yours all along. So you write to a college and ask, "Could you explain the difference between Marx and Ted Koppel." When the careful answer comes back do not instantly write. "Thanks. That really helps!" No, say nothing or if you feel really pinned down when you see the person say "Thanks for your response." This does n0t mean that the response helped -- that would be too much to concede -- but gets you off the hook from expressing any sense of obligation.

2. If you do anything ever, no matter how greedy you were about it, remember to express it as "volunteering." You know. "I am volunteering to let you pick you the tab for lunch." Or, "I volunteered to fly to Paris for the law and fashion conference." Volunteering means someone owes you, not the other way around.

3. Never oppose the administration on behalf of someone other than yourself. A faithful employee gets fired, not your problem. The dean says he is giving his buddies a raise and asks you what you think. It looks good to you as long as you were not eligible for the same raise.

4. Take no position unless you have a great deal of company. This is important. There is no right, wrong, good or evil. It is all about protecting your options. Even if you teach professional responsibility, talk about ethics or attend church or temple. Lying, half-truths, nondisclosure are all permitting in service to yourself no matter how low the benefit to you or high the cost to someone else.

5. If you take a position, show that it does not matter that much. If you show passion or caring you show weakness.

6. Use information strategically. If you have information that someone else wants it is of value to you if only because someone else wants it. Even if it seems worthless to you, hang in there. Some one may ask you and instantly your importance increases.

7. If you are in a discussion and feel you are not convincing the other person, quickly pull out one of the old favorites -- incivility, bullying, offensive behavior. Forget the fact that overuse of these words minimizes real instances of cruelty and inequity.

You are on your way to being a true "professional."

Obama, Look behind you!

Yes, Obama has now announced he is trying to figure whose "ass to kick." Duh, welcome to the party dude but you are about 6 weeks too late. Doesn't the USA have a few thousand boats at least some of which could be used in the clean up. Or a few thousand national guards people who can use a shovel.

Obama, want an ass to kick? Other than BP, I suggest looking behind you.

Oil Spill Chesapeake Bay

I'll just throw this out there. Suppose the BP catastrophe that is affecting mainly working class people in Southern Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi were in the Chesapeake Bay. Do you suppose there would have been more national attention, more pressure brought to bear on BP and Obama may have become "furious" sooner? Which group has more clout? Red neck shrimpers on the Gulf Coast or well-heeled North Easterners with vacation home on the Bay. Or how about a spill off Massachusetts maybe near the Vineyard.

Furious

I read in the paper today that Obama is furious about the oil spill. That really helps!! Right?

Comment on Networking

[I have elevated this comment on my last post to a post so that readers will see it.]

Yes, The issue here is not networking perse but its place and use relative to other factors. Networking in a useful sense is collaborating with people to gain insight share resources and do anything that results in a more productive outcome. However the problem arises when networking surpasses functional things in importance. When you connections are more important than your work or ideas or your advertising is more important than product your are selling then there is a problem. In a sense it is an odd commentary of sorts on the level of rationality our society possesses. As much as we like to consider ourselves products of the enlightenment we really are sort of primitive if not mystical about many of our decisions. Of course instead of the sun god we worship "the market" brand loyalty and the ivy league.

Networking or Substance?

A comment, which I urge you to read, to my last post inspired this one.

I am not sure how to create a Venn diagram on this blog but I'll describe it. One is the universe of all law professors who are big on networking. They are at every conferences, give lots of talks (typically the same one), email and call others usually to make known what they have doneunder the guise of complimenting the person they are calling. At the extreme they are relentless name droppers.

The other big circle is of those law teachers who produce articles, books, think hard about things, and let their work largely speak for itself. They also spend time preparing for class.

These groups are far from mutually exclusive and so there is what I think is called the intersection. The circles overlap -- networkers can be substantively productive but many are not. Instead they, well, network and it becomes in the eyes of others a substitute for production.

For example, when I first took one of the jobs I held I was told all about the person I had replaced. He did this! He did that! and so on. After hearing this for weeks I did a literature search and discovered almost nothing. But somehow he had taken the small amount he had done and made a mountain of a molehill.

The internet has now made networking even easier and that's good because networking is not per se a bad thing. When it substitutes for substance is it. Or when it becomes exclusively self-promotional it is. One thing that seems pervasive about networkers in certain areas is that they cite each other. In fact, there is seems to be reciprocal citing. Little and big cliques arise that tend to retard rather than advance the scholarship in that area. Why? Because if you network enough, no one will criticize because to so so would be to lose a reciprocal cite.

Watchin Obama Sink

[Posted this yesterday. Now watching Obama's press conference -- very weak, aloof, unresponsive.]

Have you ever driven by an independently owned restaurant and estimated how long it would take for it to fold? It actually happens all the time. Having enough money to open a restaurant is apparently unrelated to good judgment and common sense. The roads are littered with these sad efforts.

Just as obvious to me is how badly Obama is handing what is generally known now as his Katrina. Today in the new debate about whether he is doing enough, I actually heard a spokesperson say "he understands how they feel." Now let's suppose there is nothing, absolutely nothing that the government can do. Nothing the Navy could do to stop the spread and no one who could subcontract the clean up process to the Dutch who are fairly good at at.

Assuming all this, would a political adviser with even a ounce of sense really not advise Obama to put on a windbreaker and get his butt down to the Gulf at least one every 10 days. I am not talking about cleaning anything thing up. I am talking about pure politics -- getting reelected even while screwing up. Put him on the news walking among the people. Create photo ops of him listening grimly.

Is this a sign of surrounding himself with "yes" men and women who are afraid to deliver a message he does not want to hear. Is it his personal arrogance based on what increasingly appears to be an ability to get ahead by simply talking? His ship is sinking in a sea of oil.

Virgin Summer Snack

I've never understood what virgin olive oil means. But on top of that you have extra virgin olive oil. Virginity is a yes or no thing, isn't it?

Nevertheless here is a wonder summer snack that will put a smile on your face.

First get some french bread of a 2 inch diameter and slice it in about 1/2 inch slices. Also, round up a cucumber and slice it in about 1/3 inch slices. Put those aside.

In a dish pour some olive oil of any degree of virginity. Add to it a bunch of salt and pepper. In other words just like in some Italian restaurants in the USA. (By the way some of my Italian relatives think USA is one word and they pronounce it OOO-SA. I wish that would catch on.)

Now put a slice of cucumber between two slices of the bread and drag it through the olive oil mixture. Do not dip. I mean drag it so the is massive absorption of the olive oil and a hefty amount of salt and pepper.

Now eat. Yum. You will smile.

Quick Power Breakfast

Here you go. To get you started in the morning.
Take one or two slices of bread. I personally like one thick slice.
Toast it or not, it's up to you.

Spread it with butter, margarine or one of the low cholesterol spreads.

Now sprinkle all over it dry roasted sunflower seed kernels. Lots of them! The stick nicely to the spread.

Finally, jam, jelly, honey or what every you like on top. If you want to you can skip the underlying spread and the jam and just use Nutella and put the sunflower seed kernels on top.

A wonderful breakfast that will supercharge your for the day.

Nutty and sweet -- just like some people I know.

Efficient Pasta

Here is a fool proof way to make great pasta with the minimum time and mess.



First, put your pasta on to boil.



While waiting for it to boil find a bowl and sprinkle the bottom with parmasean cheese.



On top of the cheese pour your favorite sauce.



When the pasta is al dente, take it off the heat, drain it and dump it into the bowl.



The hot pasta heats the sauce and melts the cheese.



Invert the bowl over a plate.



Enjoy.

No Place for the Working Class

The nomination of the Elena Kegan reminds me once again that there is no political party that is comfortable for working class people although they are often fooled into thinking otherwise. Clearly working class people are the new Invisible Men and Women. Now the Democrats appoint another North Eastern elitist to the Supreme Court. The love affair of Clinton and Obama with these people tells you all you need to know about their pandering to the elites. Remember Clinton and Kimba Wood, Zoe Baird and Lani Guinier.

I share the values of more Democrats than Republicans but not for the same reasons. Consequently, I don't trust their values. Take Kagan who was so solidly against military recruiting while at Harvard but evidently not so against it that she would not serve the President who originated it. What's the difference? At Harvard nearly everyone agreed with her. To have the guts to condemn Clinton would have meant a huge career detour. Like so many law professors it is all about self interest. Just watch them when a Supreme Court justice they rail against visits campus.

The Republicans, on the other hand, appoint people who would have the police living in our bedrooms and oil gushing onto our beaches. Unlike the Democrats, the Republicans do seem to have some core values but, at the extremes, many are just plain scary. Working class people, to whom they appeal so cynically, are just means to an end. Hopefully working class people will figure this out on their own because Democrats do everything to demonstrate their own indifference to the working class.

The opposition to allowing recruitment by the military services on campus is particularly irksome. What an easy cause for a North Eastern elitist. Few or none of the people opposing those interviews would be caught dead actually being in the military. Why? Because the military has traditionally been the place for working class and minorities to have what is as close to an equal opportunity as can be found in the USA. To be sure it cannot be found on any elitist campus. I don't get it. No one is forced to go to a military recruiter. Just who are people like Kagan protecting? And if people like Kagan want to change the policy then kissing up to the President who signed off on it is hardly the way.

Just once I'd like to see a nomination that shows some imagination.

Lucky Jim: Summer Sequel

I generally prefer Martin Amis to his father Kingsley but no book captures class bias more accurately that Kingsley's 1953 book, Lucky Jim. It is a humorous book and brilliant book. I think brilliant because even those who do not occupy either side in the world of academic class warfare can enjoy it. The book centers around Jim Dixon, woefully out of place in the British upper classes of academia and knowing it. In the edition I have there is an interesting preface by David Lodge. How appropriate.

The photo is from the film version. Can you tell which one is Jim? It was a bit of a flop at the time but deserves a look today. You can find it on Amazon but it's a bit pricey.



My favorite nugget from the book --not sure it is in the film -- is Jim's description what he teaches as "along the knife-edge dividing the conceivably-just-about-relevant from the irreducibly, immitigably, irrelevant." What an admirable use of hyphens and the word immitigably. Actually, I think the most interesting things are on that knife edge because you never know when they may fall into one category or the other.

No More BP

Maybe it is irrational but I have not bought Exxon since the Valdez. Now I am adding BP to my list. It's unfortunate since it is closest to my house and I usually drive around on empty but if the market works at all I will do what I can to signal my anger.