“A clear and present danger”

Retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig, at today’s hearing of the January 6 committee:

“I have written . . . that today, almost two years after that fateful day in January 2021, that still, Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy. That’s not because of what happened on January 6. It’s because to this very day the former president, his allies, and supporters pledge that in the presidential election of 2024, if the former president or his anointed successor as the Republican Party presidential candidate were to lose that election, that they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election, but succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020.”

These comments look back to an opinion piece that Luttig wrote earlier this year: “The Conservative Case for Avoiding a Repeat of January 6” (The New York Times ).

The pardon list

“I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works”: John Eastman, in an e-mail to Rudy Giuliani.

He didn’t make it.

Clarence to Ginni to John?

Yet another revelation that everything was/is even worse than it had appeared. From The New York Times:

A lawyer advising [John Eastman] President Donald J. Trump claimed in an email after Election Day 2020 to have insight into a “heated fight” among the Supreme Court justices over whether to hear arguments about the president’s efforts to overturn his defeat at the polls, two people briefed on the email said. . . .

Mr. Eastman’s email, if taken at face value, raised the question of how he would have known about internal tension among the justices about dealing with election cases. Mr. Eastman had been a clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas.

And as the Times notes, Eastman and Virginia Thomas had been exchanging e-mails.

Notice too the threat of calculated chaos that supported the scheme to challenge election results in the Supreme Court: “Be there, will be wild!” Trump tweeted on December 19, 2020. And then a pro-Trump lawyer to Eastman, circa December 24: “odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.”

[Post title: after “Tinker to Evans to Chance.”]

How to enjoy Ulysses

From Random House, 1934, an advertisement: “How to enjoy James Joyce’s great novel Ulysses” (Harry Ransom Center, UT Austin).

Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)

[The Ransom Center files this advertisement under “Indecent Behavior — Sexuality, Gender, and Transgression.”]

Bloomsday 2022

Stephen Dedalus closes his eyes as he walks with his father Simon:

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916).

Thursday, June 16, 1904. The day begins:

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).

Bloom is indeed a fellow of the right kidney. The left too. But Simon Dedalus could never have imagined his son in the company of Mr. Bloom.

I have to grant that the kidney bit is almost certainly no more than coincidence. But if Hugh Kenner can make meaning of his car’s odometer reading on Bloomsday, I’m entitled to this kidney connection.

Related reading
All OCA Bloomsday posts

[Bloomsday : “the 16th of June 1904. Also: the 16th of June of any year, on which celebrations take place, esp. in Ireland, to mark the anniversary of the events in Joyce’s Ulysses” (Oxford English Dictionary ). Stephen’s closing his eyes as he walks already prefigures the Proteus episode of Ulysses.]

Vanishing pencils

From the Lou Grant episode “Hunger” (March 1, 1982). Animal (Daryl Anderson) talks with Lou (Ed Asner) and Art (Jack Bannon):

Animal: “Hey, we have another memo from the eighth floor.”

Lou: “Hot dog.”

Animal: “How’s this for an arresting opening line: ‘Where have all the pencils gone?’”

Lou: “Hey, that’s kind of lyrical.”

Art reads: “Pencils are vanishing at the rate of one hundred per day at the Tribune. Are people taking them home, tossing them in the trash, or eating them for lunch? They certainly aren’t wearing them out at work. Please conserve. The Tribune management.”

Lou: “Isn’t Mrs. Pynchon wasting a lot of energy on this conservation campaign?”

Art: “Hey, pencils disappear. That’s their style. They like to vanish.”

And:

Animal: “I’m gonna buy my own pencils. You can get seconds from the pencil company. A whole cigar box full’ll cost you seven bucks. I got some one time. The writing said ‘Knowledge Is Power.’ ‘Knowledge’ was spelled wrong.”

Lou: “Get me some, okay?”

Animal: “Sure. Hey, who needs the Trib’s pencils?”

[He picks up a pencil, snaps it, and tosses the halves.]

Art: “Atta boy. Gesture of defiance with my property.”

Wasted pencils: a light variation on the theme of wasted food running through the episode.

Other Lou Grant posts
HB, or no. 2 : Lost LA : Lou’s who : Visitors to the newsroom

“On Point”

In Salt Lake City, the debut of “On Point,” a fifteen-foot pencil sculpture made from an old utility pole.

See also these pencil sculptures, twelve and sixteen feet.

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All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

[Yes, the eraser is way too big.]

Elegiac

[“Capping Things Off.” Zippy, June 15, 2022. Click for a larger view.]

I am happy that I never got around to reading that book, written, Griffy says, by “a guy who called Trump an ‘idiot’ in 2016 and now genuflects before him.”

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All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

“Solid!”

From the Lou Grant episode “Jazz” (January 4, 1982). Rossi (Robert Walden) is trying to reunite a long-disbanded jazz quartet, three of whose members are played by real musicians: Louie Bellson, Ray Brown, and Joe Williams. Shades of Route 66 !

It turns out that nearly everyone in the newsroom is a jazz fan, and several are musicians. Who knew? Art (Jack Bannon) played trumpet; Charlie (Mason Adams) studied clarinet; Rossi (Robert Walden) played bass. Grouchy Lou (Ed Asner) has no interest. “Why don’t all you cats bring your instruments in, and we’ll jam after deadline? Solid!” he sneers.

Not long after, Art, Charlie, Rossi, and Billie (Linda Kersey) are looking at a record catalog.

Art: “Basically a big band catalog, but there’s some real collector’s items in it.”

Charlie: “Look at all that Ellington.”

Rossi: “Wow — Stan Kenton, This Modern World, City of Glass.”

Billie: “Let me know when you get to June Christy.”

And Animal (Daryl Anderson) leans over from Lou’s desk: “They got any Zoot Sims?”

And Lou sneers again. He’s strictly an L7. When Rossi mentions the disbanded quartet’s classic recording of “Summertime,” Lou fondly recalls the McGuire Sisters. Ahh, “Summertime.” But that’s the wrong time. Some pretty clever writing there.

Related reading
All OCA jazz posts (Pinboard)

“Like Shakespeare’s”

Martin Cunningham is just the man to help Tom Kernan reform his life:

James Joyce, “Grace,” in Dubliners (1914).

Leopold Bloom is or will be one of those friends. From Ulysses (1922): “Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent. Like Shakespeare’s face.”

Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)