Today in Supreme Court History: August 26, 1964

8/26/1964: Lyndon B. Johnson nominated as Democratic candidate for president. He would make two appointments to the Supreme Court: Justices Abe Fortas and Thurgood Marshall.

President Johnson's appointees to the Supreme Court

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Beltran v. Smith, 458 U.S. 1303 (decided August 26, 1982): imprisoned gangster, cooperating with prosecutors and in the Witness Protection Program, claims that he will be killed if transferred to another prison; Rehnquist denies stay of transfer order, no showing that program officials will fail to protect him (he served his time and afterward got back into gang activity, in 2009 was killed in a shootout with police)

[Dan Schiavetta]

today's movie review: She's Gotta Have It, 1986

Spike Lee's first widely distributed movie (his first movie, We Cut Heads, was about a barbershop), though in black and white, was a joy to see, and I'm not just talking about the extended focus on Tracy Camilla Johns's nipples, or her elaborate candle-lit ritual bed for having sex. There's also the one color scene, a dance sequence in Fort Greene Park, which is dazzling. I used to walk there after appearing in court and sit at the same fountain, wishing I lived there. I so wanted to live in Brooklyn after I got back East after law school. But despite scouring the Village Voice classifieds every Wednesday and applying for "shares", I never got accepted, and I ended up living with a friend in the Bronx, where she taught school. It was through that friend that I met my future wife, from the Dominican Republic, who moved in with us, so the Brooklyn thing never happened.

I saw this movie in 1986 with a white friend ("with benefits") when I was living upstate. It was an all-white crowd. We were struck by people laughing at things that didn't seem to be meant as jokes, as if there were in-jokes we weren't getting. Were we really clueless? Or were these folks laughing to show they were cool? My friend and I grew up in conservative families who did not approve of our leftward lifestyle and career choices. Her roommate, a "red diaper baby", had divorced parents and a father who desperately wanted to get back to Park Slope, a place I'd never heard of, apparently a paradise of love, joy, beauty and creativity. It is certainly true that white liberals want to be liked by black people, want to be "in" with them. The "credentialing" some of us do has been made fun of -- immediately making clear to new black acquaintances that we're not racist, often in stilted ways. I do it myself, though I try to be subtle about it. What if we don't do it -- will the black person assume otherwise? I don't think black people have any particular way to tell one way or the other -- they don't have the equivalent of that "gaydar" we all wish we had. I've been mistaken for a conservative many times, and it pisses me off -- especially when I get the wink-wink nudge-nudge from white racists. The truth is that white people, if left adrift, get sucked into Whiteworld unless they make a sustained, conscious effort to keep escaping it. At least that's been my experience.

Back to the movie . . . the Johns character, Nola, lives in black-hipster Brooklyn and is involved with three men: a narcissistic male model who would really rather be with a white girl, the Lee character, a bike messenger (when he says "please Baby please Baby Baby Baby please please" it's funny, though the first couple of times only), and grown-up who wants kids with her. When they each declare that she should pick her "one and only" she is faced with what a critic called a "mock crisis". If all three leave she can easily find others -- she even has a lesbian friend who comes on to her. It's not really her problem. She's not what these days we would call a "poly" (an arrangement that I'm still not convinced is ever permanent). She simply loves sex, and the movie at no point insinuates that she's a "slut". That's a word that women fling at each other; most men don't care (at least those who are not knuckle-draggers). The movie was made at a point where AIDS was still considered something that only gay men worried about. The only scourge straight people had was herpes, and it wasn't much of a scourge. Around this time I had a girlfriend who had it and it didn't affect much. We simply didn't have sex whenever she had an eruption, and I never caught it. I'm glad AIDS is now treatable and we're back to where sex can be fun and not frightening. Which was the culture portrayed in this movie, which also gave us white folks our first glance at this black subculture. As a final note, it was good to see a black-themed movie with comedy which did not have to have a racial dimension. For example, the many cameos of "dogs" (unappealing men who Nola has to fight off).

[Mr. Bumble]

Welcome to the latest edition of "Anecdotes and Wet Dreams" courtesy of captcrisis.

[grb]

OTOH, it’s a damn good movie. Nola Darling is a warm and highly-sensible character who faces continual pressure from people determined to reduce her to their expectations. There are a few moments of self-doubt, but mostly she remains serenely and triumphantly her own person. Lee did a second take on the film years later for TV, but I don’t know how that turned out.

His father, Bill Lee, had a short role in the film as Darling’s father. Bill Lee (who died in May) was a jazz bassist and composer who worked with Max Roach, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Harry Belafonte, Arlo Guthrie, Billy Strayhorn, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger. He did the music for the film.

[Dan Schiavetta]

grb,

Thanks. You're entirely correct about Nola. And I forgot the part about Bill Lee.

Johns had a bit part in the next Spike Lee film, School Daze, about the antics of students at a HBCU, also quite a good film. As I recall the last line is, "Wake up", which is the first line in DTRT.

[Frank Drackman]

Ahh Herpes,
wasn't that a Eddie Murphy bit, "Raw" 1987,
man, he'd get Lous C.K.'d with that material today,
Joking about Faggots,
"There's nothing like having a nation of fags looking for you...I'd be at parties... There's always two or three at a party..."
Goofing on Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby (back when Bill Cosby was "Amurica's Dad")
and used to love the Nerdy White Guy Voice..

Black Guy "Doc, I got fire shooting out my Dick!"
White Doctor "So you're getting a burning Sensation?"
Black Guy "No, fire shoot out my dick, is all. A burst of flame fly out my dick when I pee. "I can't even pee in the house, I burn
my house down. I gotta go outside."

Eddie Murphy has more great stuff in 1 random minute of "Raw" than Spike Lee's whole bullshit career. (OK, that cameo in "Me & Julio down at the Schoolyard" was good(I know it was Spud Webb)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6VrKro8djw

Frank

[Frank Drackman]

and any one of Spud Webb's dunks (or any random 5 minutes from "Pulp Fiction" "Reservoir Dogs" or "Jackie Brown" is more entertaining than Spike Lee's whole Director's Portfolio.
(he was friggin 5'6"! 42" Vertical Leap!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1YRJvFvlgg

Frank

[Magister]

I liked this movie. Spike Lee has some really great movies. (I didn't care for Do the Right Thing which always seems to get named as his best.)

[Dan Schiavetta]

I think DTRT gets singled out because it was a “Big Statement” movie, and the Statement was about race relations, which at the time was a big deal in Spike’s neck of the woods. (Critics don't seem to want to actually talk about it; it's a pet cobra that they enjoy showing off.)

[Frank Drackman]

Does it even matter that it's a shitty movie? Any of Madonna's shitty movies are better (I like "Who's that Girl") and that's not saying alot.

[Syd Henderson]

Lee may actually be getting better, though "He Got Game" may have been his best, but "BlacKKKlansman" and "Da 5 Bloods" are pretty amazing. Although "25th Hour" may be his best film, and if you want to ghettoize him as a black filmmaker, I have to point out there are no major black characters in that film. He's always been an interracial film maker.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I've only seen a few Spike movies, tell the truth. And my movie-seeing (it's not "going" any more is it?) has fallen off.

Besides "She's Gotta Have It", "School Daze" and "Do the Right Thing", I've seen "Jungle Fever", "Girl 6", "Malcolm X" (with a black teenager I used to babysit), and "Crooklyn".

One thing with Spike was that he tended to let the white characters take over, at least in the mind of the audience. The black characters were not as deeply portrayed. Maybe that's changed? I'm reminded of Rudyard Kipling, who was more observant of the Indians than the Indians could have been themselves.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Spike Lee's body of work had been temporarily banned from consideration after ruining the concert footage of David Byrne's "American Utopia." A great concert ruined through too much tricky camera angles and over directing.

[Mr. Bumble]

8/26/1964: Lyndon B. Johnson nominated as Democratic candidate for president.
...and subsequently promised:
We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.
speech at Akron University, 21 October 1964;

[Dr. Ed 2]

FDR said the same thing 24 years earlier -- "I tell you time and time again that I will not send your boys off to fight in a foreign war."

[Frank Drackman]

"They said if I voted for Goldwater there'd be 500,000 American boys in Veet'nam, damn if they weren't right!"

[Magister]

The 1940 Democratic platform was not to send troops to foreign wars, except in case of attack. When the US was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it was no longer a foreign war, and voters elected FDR to another term in 1944 pretty convincingly. (Dr. Ed 2 is misquoting an October 1940 campaign speech.)

[Mr. Bumble]

So provide a link to one of the speeches. There was more than one made that month.
"How Franklin Roosevelt Lied America Into War"
https://www.ihr.org/jhr/v14/v14n6p19_Chamberlin.html

[Magister]

So you can't be saying that the Japanese were justified in attacking Pearl Harbor because of Roosevelt's economic and logistical support to our eventual allies? Or that FDR knew Pearl Harbor was going to happen but didn't take any steps to reduce the lives and treasure lost there? Or that it would have been better to stay isolated and let the Axis powers carry out even more genocide and take over the rest of the world? Or that United States involvement was irrelevant to the outcome of World War II?

Kind of sad that partisans like you are signing up for the wrong side of "City on the Edge of Forever" just to pwn FDR.

[Frank Drackman]

Let me know when Roo-sha (HT B.S. anders) Attacks Pearl Harbor,

OK, with the alacrity the current DemoKKKrat-Industiral Complex is working, Roo-sha will probably attack Pearl Harbor. Just let me know when it happens,

Frank

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Vaxxies, I have good news and bad news.

Bad News:

Pfizer says the mRNA vaccine platform isn't Messenger RNA but ModRNA. Which apparently means:

"Unlike mRNA, modRNA modifies one of four compounds in RNA that make it last longer in the body, less immunogenic (reduced stimulation of the innate immune system), and more efficient at producing a protein—in this case, the spike protein, Mr. Steger stated. Since modRNA cannot target specific cells to make viral protein, it can attack perfectly healthy cells and bypass protective barriers in the body, like the blood-brain barrier."

Ok so that's the bad news here is the good news:

The CDC website still calls it mRNA so that means you're in the clear when you take the next Pfizer booster! You won't be getting boosted with Pfizers harmful modRNA like they so illegally misinformationally claim, you'll be taking harmless mRNA like the State declares.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Why do the Volokh Conspirators -- ostensibly educated, reasoning, modern professionals -- never respond to any of the science-disdaining, delusional, QAnon-class commentary from their target audience of half-educated, disaffected wingnuts?

Not one of them has the character or courage needed to address these points?

#Cowardice
#PartisanHackery

[Mr. Bumble]

Yada, yada, yada,blah,blah,blah...

[Frank Drackman]

Jeezus Coach, don't you have a recruit to diddle??

[Cheerio]

I suspect the good professors simply mute out the most toxic and unproductive commenters...at (ahem) both extremes.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Aside from Arthur, who simply plays his one note bigotry accusation over and over, the abusive commenters here are all right wing. And the blog says that it’s unmoderated.

Why a person would want to abase himself with juvenile hostility is beyond me. I see a total of 8 responses to my post today that are muted because they’re from commenters that have proven themselves a waste of my time (and yours) to read.

[Mr. Bumble]

Queen almathea 14 mins ago
Flag Comment Mute User

Poor Lil’ Frankie, so many Black guys used his mom in interesting ways they referred to his childhood home as the number one stop on the “underground railroad!”

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

who simply plays his one note bigotry accusation over and over

The bigotry at this blog is multifaceted, incessant, express, and almost uniformly conservative. And it starts at the top, with a terminally awkward, racial slur-hurling right-winger.

Only the most delusional, disingenuous readers deny this. Some other conservatives try to explain it away, or ignore it, but most do not deny it.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Will you ever forgive me for not using your pigeon training techniques on my children?

[Sarcastr0]

RAK, BCD, Drackman, and Bumble are the only ones who still seek to throw bomb in these threads.

That’s a pretty low number considering the usual. And just shows them for who they are.

Don’t let the bastardized get you down, and at least in this thread ignore them and let them get their attention elsewhere.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

How's your sports car & McMansion shopping, Mr. Rich Man North of Richmond?

[Dan Schiavetta]

Sarcastr0,

Ok thanks.

Perhaps the fact that they comment so often is skewing my perception.

I keep Arthur unmuted for old time’s sake (you remember, the days of "Sarcastro" with the avator of Fidel scowling). The prior, saner version of him (before he got his divinity degree) sometimes still comes through, as in his response to my comment on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

[Frank Drackman]

Sar-Castro,
you're so boring, the actual Castro would have had you executed years ago.
If it wasn't for me and Captain Kangaroo Crisis's Porn Reviews this would be like umm,
well like it is now, Poindexters talking about bee-otches dating habits, (Show me a pic of her Va-jay-jay, and maybe we can talk)

Frank

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I suspect the good professors simply mute out the most toxic and unproductive commenters

Nah . . . this blog censors the liberals and libertarians, then acts the matador with respect to the right-wingers (waving the most bigoted, disgusting right-wing comments through).

[SRG2]

Pfizer, on its website, confirms its COVID-19 vaccine contains modRNA: “ModRNA stands for nucleoside-modified messenger RNA”

So mRNA, then.

I wonder why BCD didn’t provide a link to his source. Herewith: https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/pfizer-documents-show-covid-19-vaccines-contain-potentially-harmful-modified-rna-not-mrna-5478674?ea_src=frontpage&ea_med=top-news-7?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge&src_src=partner&src_cmp=ZeroHedge

Basically, “chemicals are scary, says lawyer”.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

modRNA and mRNA are not synonyms Vaxxie.

They are different things which is why they have different names. That’s kinda how language works.

HTH

[Mr. Bumble]

That’s kinda how language works.

Not any more, at least for some people. See "women" with dicks.

[SRG2]

modRNA and mRNA are not synonyms Vaxxie.

Evidently from the description modRNA is a kind of mRNA,

Also evidently you think "Vaxxie" is an insult - and i suppose that from where you're coming, being scientifically illiterate and a credulous anti-science authoritarian cretin is the pinnacle of human achievement,

[grb]

BravoCharlieDelta : “Vaxxies, I have good news and bad news”

I suspect BCD will be around decades hence, still predicting the zombie apocalypses via covid vaccines, still sourcing his latest hot take to some junk website, still ranting about the massive conspiracy behind it all….

This is probably his twentieth or thirtieth “bombshell” about vaccine danger yet the safety record of vaccines continues serenely on, oblivious to all his ragebot histrionics.

But what choice does he have? His handlers told him to be anti-vaxx and he believes, says and does whatever he’s told to believe, say, and do. Such a good obedient boy…..

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Hey there's another plandemic coming have you scheduled your MaxxVaxx Booster XL yet? Have you re-upped your monthly mask box subscription?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

https://labeling.pfizer.com/ShowLabeling.aspx?id=14471

do CTRL+F "modRNA" and CTRL+F "mRNA"

Weird how those are two distinctly different things.

[SRG2]

Weird how those are two distinctly different things.

If A is a sub-category of B, is A different from B?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I wonder why “modRNA” is even on Pfizer’s label, since according to you it’s exactly “mRNA”?

Weird that they would put it on there and use “mRNA” and “modRNA”.

But hey, what do I know, I just know how to read and other nerdy shit like that.

[SRG2]

But hey, what do I know, I just know how to read and other nerdy shit like that.

But not understand, which nerdy shit appears to be beyond you.

As I said, modRNA is a type of mRNA. Why wouldn't Moderna specify that the type of mRNA is modRNA?

Odd that you can't answer a simple question, if A is a sub-category of B, is A different from B?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleoside-modified_messenger_RNA
A nucleoside-modified messenger RNA (modRNA) is a synthetic messenger RNA (mRNA) in which some nucleosides are replaced by other naturally modified nucleosides or by synthetic nucleoside analogues.

[Frank Drackman]

Again, my mom treated more burned soldiers/marines/airmen/sailors of all races than you dream about in your wettest wet dreams. She’s a Horrorcost Survivor, used to go on medical missions to Haiti, Nigeria, South Alabama, all of those “Shithole” Countries, until she got too old (75) and You’re a Cock Sucking Nigger, so there’s that. (please correct me if I'm wrong)

Frank “Kinder/Gentler on Sabbatical”

Frank