Twitter is a deliberate abstention. Somehow I hate the idea of there always being, in the back of my mind, this little voice saying: “Oh, I should tweet about this.” Which knowing me, I know there would be. I’m sure some people can do it in a fun and healthy way, but I don’t think I could. Plus, it’s kind of funny – I’ve spent my whole life learning to write very slowly, for maximum expressiveness, and for money. So the idea of writing really quickly, for free, offends me. Also, one of the simplify-life things I’m doing is to try to just write fiction, period. There was a time there a few years back where I was writing humour, and screenplays, and travel journalism so on – just trying to keep the juices flowing and kick open some new doors. These, in turn, led to a period of sort of higher public exposure – TV appearances here in the US and some quasi-pundit-like moments. To be honest, this made me feel kind of queasy. I’m not that good on my feet and I found that I really craved the feeling of deep focus and integrity that comes with writing fiction day after day, in a sort of monastic way. So that’s what I’m trying to do now, as much as I can manage. And Twitter doesn’t figure into that.
Needless to say, Tsarnaev is probably the single most hated figure in America now. As a result, as Bazelon noted, not many people will care what is done to him, just like few people care what happens to the accused terrorists at Guantanamo, or Bagram, or in Yemen and Pakistan. But that’s always how rights are abridged: by targeting the most marginalized group or most hated individual in the first instance, based on the expectation that nobody will object because of how marginalized or hated they are. Once those rights violations are acquiesced to in the first instance, then they become institutionalized forever, and there is no basis for objecting once they are applied to others, as they inevitably will be (in the case of the War on Terror powers: as they already are being applied to others). As Bazelon concludes:No one is crying over the rights of the young man who is accused of killing innocent people, helping his brother set off bombs that were loaded to maim, and terrorizing Boston Thursday night and Friday. But the next time you read about an abusive interrogation, or a wrongful conviction that resulted from a false confession, think about why we have Miranda in the first place. It’s to stop law enforcement authorities from committing abuses. Because when they can make their own rules, sometime, somewhere, they inevitably will.Leave aside the fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been convicted of nothing and is thus entitled to a presumption of innocence. The reason to care what happens to him is because how he is treated creates precedent for what the US government is empowered to do, including to US citizens on US soil. When you cheer for the erosion of his rights, you’re cheering for the erosion of your own.
When she entered the room, her first gesture was to send the white-jacketed Chinese steward back for a larger glass of Scotch, gesturing with fingers held three inches apart the measure that she favored. Then she looked about for the first question, only to be met with silence — a response, as I learned later, that was a reflex among the London-based reporters, who had long experience of how dismissive she could be.Discomfited, I jumped in, asking if she had any answer to protesters in Hong Kong, with its six million people, who were denouncing Britain’s failure to give them a say, by way of a referendum, on the prospect of being handed into the thrall of communism, an ideology Mrs. Thatcher abhorred.
Years later, a British diplomat, retelling the story over a reunion dinner, said I had asked the prime minister why she had “sold Hong Kong down the river”; but that, most assuredly, was not how I expressed it, for all that the embellishment improved the diplomat’s story. In any case, Mrs. Thatcher leaned forward in her armchair, studying me for a moment with a withering eye, before expressing her astonishment.
“What an extraordinary question!” she said, taking a sip of her whiskey before turning to the ambassador and saying, “Did you say that this chap is English?” Then, without waiting for a reply, she resumed her rebuke. “I must assume that you have been away from the U.K. for a very long time,” she said. “If you knew me at all, you’d know that I never” — the emphasis was on “never” — “answer a question based on a false premise.”
A still from the 1964 Czech film Lemonade Joe
The United States has dealt with American citizens who had commit acts of terrorism before. We Mirandized them, we charged them, we ensured that they had competent legal counsel, and we tried them in civilian courts where they received the typical rights and protections guaranteed to the accused. In none of those cases did this decision endanger more lives, prevent adequate prosecution, or otherwise present any threat to the country or its people.Timothy McVeigh: killed 168 people. Injured over 800 more. Was motivated by political convictions. He was arrested, Mirandized, charged, appointed with legal counsel, and tried in a civilian court. Ted Kaczynski: killed three people. Injured 23 more. Was motivated by political convictions. He was arrested, Mirandized, charged, appointed with legal counsel, and processed through a civilian court. Eric Rudolph: killed two people. Injured at least 150 more. Was motivated by political convictions. He was arrested, Mirandized, charged, appointed with legal counsel, and processed through a civilian court.
If you recognize that the results of these legal cases were consonant with our system of jurisprudence and with justice, you cannot ask for a separate status for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev without supporting legal discrimination based on ethnicity and religion. To deny Tsarnaev the legal status conferred on prior domestic terrorists, or to support such a denial, is to abandon the most elementary commitment of modern jurisprudence, which is the equality of all people under the law. It’s to stand for legal bigotry.
Anna Marie Johnson annotates Annie Dillard
I have to wonder if Sandberg does not realize that she is going to die someday. There is so little life and pleasure in her book outside of work. Even sex is framed as something that men will get more of if they pitch in and help their working wives.Success, particularly the kind Sandberg calls for, requires ever more time at the office, ever more travel. It requires always being available, always a click away. Sandberg is almost giddy when she describes getting up at 5 a.m. to answer e-mails before her children wake up and getting back on her computer once they are asleep.
“Facebook is available 24/7 and for the most part, so am I,” she writes. “The days when I even think of unplugging for a weekend or a vacation are long gone.”
Imagine what that life looks like to a child. Imagine what it looks like to yourself when you are 80.
That is not how I want my daughter to live, and it is not how I want to live.
Les daims hantent les sites sacrés du Japon, parmi les lanternes de pierre du parc de Nara ou sur le rivage de Miyajima. septembre 1989.
Sketch for the madhouse scene from The Rake’s Progress (Stravinsky/Auden/Kallman), performed at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre, 1962; image courtesy of the Motley Collection of Theatre and Costume Design, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana