Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell, questioning Brett Kavanaugh:
“What do you consider to be too many beers?”Exceedingly strange stuff. Kinda seems that Kavanaugh never quite left high school. Kinda seems that he’s an angry drunk, even when sober.
“I don’t know. Uh, you know, we — whatever the chart says. Blood-alcohol chart.”
I wish that every member of the United States Senate understood civic duty — and courage — as well as Christine Blasey Ford does.
I learned about this Anglo-Saxon word yesterday while listening to an episode of Word of Mouth. It’s from Mark Forsyth, connoisseur of forgotten and obscure words: úhtcearu. The word means “care that comes in the early morning.” Or as Forsyth says, “lying awake early in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep because you’re worried about the day to come.” Or as Leroy Carr sang, “the blues before sunrise.” The word úhtcearu is especially appropriate today.
[The pronunciation seems to go something like this: “oot-kee-arr-oo.” Definition from the Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898). Uhtcearu is also the name of a band.]
[Stage Fright (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1950). Click either image for a larger view.]
Charlotte Inwood (Marlene Dietrich) and Sergeant Mellish (Ballard Berkeley) speak of self-incrimination and stationery supplies:
“So they’ve heard everything I said.”
“Yes.”
“And it’s all in that book.”
“All in there, in shorthand.”
“How clever of you.”
[Stage Fright (dir. Alfred Hitchchock, 1950). Click for a larger view.]
London used, at one point, a three-letter, four-number telephone system. Thus VICtoria.
More EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : Chinatown : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Perry Mason : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Side Street : Sweet Smell of Success : Tension : This Gun for Hire
I’m a close reader. In 1998, when Bill Clinton told PBS’s Jim Lehrer that “There is not a sexual relationship,” I immediately asked (out loud), “But was there?” I wish Lehrer had asked the question too.
Reading a transcript of Brett Kavanaugh’s Fox News interview, I’m struck by the careful repetition:
“I had [have?] never sexually assaulted anyone, not in high school, not ever.”If Kavanaugh wants to claim (in a way that defies all plausibility) that the acts of which he’s accused were without sexual intent, the denial “I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone” becomes a crafty way to dodge the question of whether he did what he’s accused of doing. In other words, “I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone.” Someone needs to ask Kavanaugh a different question on Thursday: “Have you ever assaulted anyone?” And another: “Have you ever engaged in horseplay that could have been construed as assault?” I’m calling Dick Durbin’s office tomorrow morning to suggest that Durbin ask exactly those questions.
“I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone in high school or otherwise.”
“I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone in high school or at any time in my life.”
“I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone.”
Julie Schumacher, author of Dear Committee Members and a new academic satire, The Shakespeare Requirement, in an interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education:
“At Minnesota we’re supposed to be using Moodle or Canvas or something with our students, and I announce on Day 1: ‘Not gonna do it. If you guys want to know what the assignment is, come to class. I’m going to write it on the chalkboard right here in front of you.’”A related post
[Devil mask, Kuna, ca. 1910. Conquistador mask, Maya, Santo Tomas Chichicastenango, ca. 1917. Cristiano mask, by Pedro Reyes Juarez, Tiaxcala, Mexico, ca. 1990. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
The museum card reads: “In masked dances, twentieth-century descendants of native peoples keep alive the memory of the Spanish invasion and the resistance of their ancestors to conquest.”
Thinking about Brett Kavanaugh and the accusations against him makes me think of my encounters with two plagiarizing students. What can I say? My experiences as a teacher color everything I see.
In the cases I have in mind, plagiarism was blatant — word for word or nearly so — and extensive. In each case, the student denied having plagiarized. One asked for a hearing before a judicial board of faculty and students and then withdrew the request, claiming to no longer have the energy to fight “these baseless accusations.” The other went through with a hearing, bringing along pages of notes (never previously mentioned) that supposedly served as the basis for the plagiarized paper. The notes themselves were carefully plagiarized from the source the student used, with slight differences from the student’s submitted essay. (A lot of work went into constructing those notes.) “I did not do this,” the student said, again and again. The board thought otherwise. They could see otherwise. The episode was painful for everyone, and it almost — almost — made me wish that I could read my students’ work with the careless eye that never notices the small details that signal plagiarism.
Each of these plagiarists appeared to be a model collegian — well-liked, mannerly, a maker of good grades. Neither could acknowledge having plagiarized without calling into question that public self, or facade. So too, I think, with Brett Kavanaugh. If he did what he is accused of doing, he cannot acknowledge it without seeing a facade fall to pieces. I wonder if his 1982 diary is something of the equivalent of my student’s notes.
[About the calendar: I’m suggesting not that it was created after the fact but that it’s a dubious kind of evidence. What hard-partying high-school student would record the times and locations of parties on a calendar? And about those good grades: might plagiarism or other forms of academic misconduct have played a part? As a colleague always pointed out, a student plagiarizing in a college class is unlikely to be plagiarizing for the first time.]
