On Teaching

Read this morning:  

Sir Thomas More: Why not be a teacher? You'd be a fine teacher; perhaps a great one. 

Richard Rich: If I was, who would know it? 

Sir Thomas More: You; your pupils; your friends; God. Not a bad public, that. 

Just about sums it up!

Jonathan Turley on Obama's Power Grab

Every now and again, a "gentleman of the Left" gets it right. 

Here's Jonathan Turley in today's Los Angeles Times Opinion pages, commenting on Barack Obama's imperialist presidency (my words, not his, but the implication is clear). Pointing out that the American system of balanced powers, as established by James Madison and the founders, was designed to protect individuals, i.e., "we, the people" (yes, that includes you and me and Bobby McGee), from "any one branch," he takes Obama to task for his "recent unilateral moves" that have "accelerated at an alarming rate under Obama." 

I like how Turley put it:

James Madison fashioned a government of three bodies locked in a synchronous orbit by their countervailing powers. The system of separation of powers was not created to protect the authority of each branch for its own sake. Rather, it is the primary protection of individual rights because it prevents the concentration of power in any one branch. In this sense, Obama is not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system; he has become the very danger that separation of powers was designed to avoid.

You'd almost think this critique came from the Racist Right. It did not. Turley admits he "happens to agree" with most of Obama's policies. My understanding is that he leans leftward, though apparently he's taken positions over the years that have angered the far left.

Unfortunately, this kind of scrutiny may be "too little, too late" from a left-leaning media that has turned a blind eye to this president's flaws. One can only hope that the tsunami of Obama Adulation that has flooded the dominant media's newsrooms is beginning to recede, leaving in its wake a few good men and women who are willing to sift through the mess and begin the long, hard, sloggy job of cleaning up after Obama once he leaves office. 

Our system is changing in a fundamental way without even a whimper of regret. No one branch in the Madisonian system can go it alone — not Congress, not the courts, and not the president. The branches are stuck with each other in a system of shared powers, for better or worse. They may deadlock or even despise one another. The founders clearly foresaw such periods. They lived in such a period.

Whatever problems we face today in politics, they are of our own making. They should not be used to take from future generations a system that has safeguarded our freedoms for more than 200 years.

 "The President's Power Grab," by Jonathan Turley (Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2014).

Breitbart: Gone but not Forgotten

He was one of a kind, sui generis.

Oxymorons define him: Beautiful freak. Happy warrior. Fearless conservative.*

Though many of his enemies celebrated Andrew Breitbart's death (go here to read the hateful things people wrote after he died), a few of his adversaries grudgingly admired him.  

Piers Morgan, for example, could be heard admitting on his program after Breitbart's death that he "really began to like Breitbart" and that their "chemistry" bad been "getting better." 

And Matt Taibbi, in his Rolling Stone obituary "Death of a Douche" (March 1, 2012) wrote:

I say this in the nicest possible way. I actually kind of liked Andrew Breitbart. Not in the sense that I would ever have wanted to hang out with him, or even be caught within a hundred yards of him without a Haz-Mat suit on, but I respected the shamelessness. Breitbart didn’t do anything by halves, and even his most ardent detractors had to admit that he had a highly developed, if not always funny, sense of humor.

Referring to the sordid Andrew Wiener saga (which the media tried to dismiss as a Breitbart-fabricated smear), Taibbi wrote, "For that one brief, shining moment--still one of the most painful-to-watch YouTube spectacles of all time--... Breitbart could legitimately claim to have the biggest, hairiest balls on earth." A bit crude, but you get the point. 

But yes, Breitbart crashing Weiner's press conference was a thing of beauty. 

That, along with images of Breitbart rollerblading in the midst of hostile protesters, getting right up in their faces, not backing down. He was fearless. 

That's what I admired most about Breitbart, what I personally found so attractive. 

Breitbart's admirers were devastated when he died unexpectedly two years ago today. He was one of the few, if not the only, conservative who seemed to understand the key principle of warfare: know your enemy.  

Breitbart not only knew and understood the Left, he also understood and employed the power of social media. As one of the founders of The Huffington Post and The Drudge Report, he was in the vanguard of a new wave of journalism. The launching of Breitbart.com seemed to be a partial fulfillment of his vision of speaking truth to power. He hated bullies, which is one reason he defended the Tea Party with such passion (oh how I wish he'd been around when the IRS story came to light).

Andrew Breitbart left a gaping hole when he died, and I'm pretty sure he's irreplaceable. Nevertheless, his vision of an empowered "citizen journalist" lives on at the website he founded which continues to expand (recently added: Breitbart London and Breitbart Texas).

And yes, some are trying to pick up his mantle, so to speak. I particularly like Ben Shapiro, seen here pulling a Breitbart and crashing a UCLA Student Association Council Meeting to speak out against the attempt to boycott Israel.

I'm guessing Andrew would have approved. 

 * "fearless conservative" is the phrase Matt Romney used to describe Breitbart. I include it here as an oxymoron as an indictment on most conservatives, including myself, who tend to cower and slink away rather than confront.

A Valentine to my Children

I saw this and was moved. 

Recommended Reading: A Word or Two About Stephen J. Dubner

Just finished reading Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper, by Stephen J. Dubner. Prior to that I read his earlier book called Choosing My Religion: A Memoir of a Family Beyond Belief, a fascinating autobiography of (as Dubner puts it) "three noisy souls." 

I tried to get my dad to read the latter, and I think he gave it the good Boy Scout try but evidently gave up. (I asked him when we got together at Christmas if he'd finished it and he shrugged and said he lost interest. My dad is nothing if not consistent: he just isn't interested in religion, no matter how articulate, honest, funny, or intelligent the writing.)

For the record, "articulate, honest, funny, and intelligent" doesn't even begin to describe Dubner's writing. His pedigree is obviously first-rate (here's a link to his bio), so I'm not sure why my dad would snub him. Dubner could probably write about garbage disposals and still be engaging.

I love the way he writes. He's brutally, painfully, excruciatingly, honest. At times, reading Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper, I felt uncomfortable, embarrassed even, for Dubner. His behavior comes across as stalking to the reader, despite the fact that he insists he's not a stalker. The title of one of his chapters is, in fact, "I am Not a Stalker!" (The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.) Yet the very point of this book is to examine the cultural phenomenon of hero-worship. If the confessional nature of the book makes the writer--admittedly obsessed if not infatuated with his childhood hero, Pittsburgh Steeler running back Franco Harris--look foolish, so what? Dubner's a journalist. At their best, journalists report objectively on what they see. If they're being fair, if they're doing their job, the reporting can and should be brutal. Why should he be less brutal when he's the subject of his own reporting? 

At the end of my copy of the book, there's a section called P.S. that includes additional essays by the author. Several of these essays are those that were published in the New York Times Magazine having to do with various sports-related topics: John Unitas ("Steel-Town Quarterback"), football stadiums ("Stronger Than Steel: The Demise of Three River Stadium"), and so on. 

Reading these marvelous essays, one understands why Dubner's an award-winning sports writer. He's an amazing stylist. His metaphors are so fresh, so unusual, so fitting, one can only assume he spends hours conjuring them. His attention to detail boggles the mind. He must literally take notes on life. 

My new ambition is to write half as well as Dubner writes: to take personal risks, to be honest, to call it as I see it, to record life as I live it, to see if, perchance, I have anything left to say.