Memetracker: Please, please tell me someone is doing something like this up here.

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 12:17 PM - 30 Comments

It’s downright addictive , especially if you’re one of those people who already loves playing forensic meme0logist, a pastime to which ITQ will cheerfully confess. It would be especially interesting to see the lag times for various media/new media outlets, but my wishlist for a Canadianized version would also track the progress of a story or controversy — like, say, the fracas over the Pride parade fracas — from blogs to aggregators to the (so-called) mainstream media, or vice versa  – to see  how a story, once broken, ricochets between all three. Heck, why not throw in twitter, what with one of our more technophilic cabinet ministers taking to the tweets to defend a change in government policy? If you really wanted to get ambitious, you could even figure out how often a party-coined catchphrase or talking point makes the leap to genuine meme status, which – ITQ suspects – happens more often than we’d think . Really, the possibilities are endless — fingers crossed that someone out there is already hard at work on it.

Black can’t get bail

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 12:14 PM - 2 Comments

Conrad Black has been in a Florida prison since he was convicted on three counts of fraud and one count of obstruction of justice in 2007— and the former CEO of Hollinger International will be stuck in a cell for at least another 11 months. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review his obstruction of justice charge, but will not release a verdict until June 2010. So Black put forward a motion to be released on bail during the interim. But a U.S. district court judge turned the motion down—saying the convicted fraudster failed to prove that the Supreme Court would likely reverse his conviction or reduce his sentence enough to justify any kind of release. Of the four co-defendants convicted of fraud, Black is the only one still serving time in a U.S. prison. One was not given jail time, another is out on bail, and the third will likely be released on parole from a prison in Ontario.

The Globe and Mail

CTV News

The oldest new mother dies

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 12:11 PM - 2 Comments

The oldest new mother in the world has died just three years after giving birth to twin sons at the age of 66. What killed Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara of Spain is unknown. But there is rampant speculation that she died of breast cancer—a fact she might have known ahead of giving birth. Bousada was diagnosed with a tumor before she delivered the boys. Afterwards, she said on Spanish TV that she thought she could have cancer. Bousada, who became pregnant after having in vitro fertilization in the U.S., was villainized in the European press; she had told doctors she was 55. Her family wasn’t entirely supportive either, though the twins will likely be taken care of by two male cousins who are in their 30s and 40s. Bousada always wanted children of her own, and never married. Before she died, Bousada said: “My mother lived to 101 years-old and I have every reason to believe longevity runs in my family.”

The Times of London

Accounting wizardry

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 12:10 PM - 0 Comments

J.R.R. Tolkien sold movie rights to his Lord of the Rings novels 40 years ago for 7.5 per cent of future receipts. Three films and $6 billion later, his heirs say they haven’t seen a dime from Time Warner Inc. Hollywood’s fabled accounting methods, as used by New Line Cinema, the Time Warner unit that made the movies, will face a jury’s scrutiny in October, when the heirs’ lawsuit against the New York-based media company is set for trial in Los Angeles Superior Court. Tolkien’s son, Christopher, 84, and his daughter, Priscilla, 80, say New Line inflated expenses and excluded revenue from its calculation of profit, meaning the family “will never see any payment at all,” despite the fact the films have generated almost $3 billion in worldwide box-office receipts, and another $3 billion from DVDs, merchandise and other sources, The case, observers say, may not only provide a window into such accounting practices, but may derail two The Hobbit films that, if their predecessors are a guide, could generate $4 billion in sales.

Bloomberg.com

The Greenless province

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 12:09 PM - 1 Comment

The Green Party of Alberta has suffered the indignity of being “de-registered” by Elections Alberta, and that’s, um, er, not a bad thing, say the Greens: “De-registration of the party is an administrative opportunity to re-organize and rebuild the party into a viable political organization.” Not to fear: national Green party leader Elizabeth May did very well at this year’s Stampede dressing up like a cowgirl.

Green Party of Alberta

Plane crashes in village northwest of Tehran

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 11:35 AM - 0 Comments

A Caspian Airlines flight heading from Tehran to Yerevan in Armenia crashed down in the Iranian village of Jannatabad early Wednesday morning, killing all 168 passengers aboard. The aircraft was just 16 minutes into its flight when, according to an eyewitness, it suddenly fell from the sky and exploded on impact. Mohammad Reza Montazer Khorasan, the head of the disaster management centre at Iran’s health ministry, said officials won’t know what caused the accident until they conduct “a thorough investigation of all contributing elements.” The Russian-built plane is believed to have been carrying mostly Armenians and some Georgians, though reports suggested 10 members of Iran’s national junior judo team may have also been onboard.

BBC News

University men are as equally victimized by violence as women, UBC study concludes

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 11:34 AM - 0 Comments

A UBC study concludes 1 in 5 university students have experienced violence in the last 6 months, 20 per cent of which are in their intimate relationships. Elizabeth Saewyc, professor at the School of Nursing, concluded that men are equally as likely as women to be victims of physical or emotional violence and that violence is linked with drinking. Both genders are equally likely to experience violence from their intimate partners.”We’ve known that drinking increases the risk of perpetrating violence,” says Saewyc. “But in this study we found alcohol consumption puts both young men and women at higher risk of being victimized, too.” Saewyc has recommended that campus health programs offer services which screen men for intimate partner violence. She also called for universities to offer programs to promote healthy dating relationships.

University of British Columbia

"Boom" say disgruntled employees

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 11:34 AM - 1 Comment

French workers are already well known for their fierce and potentially dangerous antics when companies announce layoffs. A string of kidnappings earlier this year saw mobs of angry workers barricade plant managers in their offices for days. Now former Nortel Network employees in France, who were laid off after the company sought bankruptcy protection, have threatened to blow up a plant. Workers set up gas canisters with a painted sign that read “Boom” outside Nortel’s operations in Chateaufort. The workers are seeking 100,000 euros along with their regular severance. Police later said the canisters were empty. It’s the second bomb threat this week by French workers—union officials at a bankrupt auto supplier threatened to detonate gas canisters unless the company’s customers, Renault SA and PSA Peugeot Citroen, paid for their severance.

Bloomberg.com

Widows choose friends over remarriage

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 11:32 AM - 0 Comments

After 47 years of marriage, retired schoolteacher Jane Austin became a widow at 69, around the time her older brother warned her about single men looking for a nurse “or an insurance settlement.” But Austin had plans to travel and take on a new job—plans that wouldn’t necessarily include a new spouse. A growing number of older widows aren’t interested in remarriage, studies show; while they grieve for their spouse, most accept or even enjoy their new singlehood, staying in touch with family and friends, organizing social gatherings and spending more time in the community. It’s bad news for widowers who think the love-starved “casserole brigade” will be lining up for them. In fact, it’s men over 65 who often struggle. Younger men have advantages like financial security, health and less frequent complaints of depression, but older men (especially those who are divorced or widowed) have fewer friends and less contact with the community. As such, they don’t eat as well as older women, are less likely to seek medical advice, and are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol.

The New York Times

In defense of the Cheesecake Factory

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 11:31 AM - 1 Comment

Is the Cheesecake Factory gross? Is it wrong that so many overweight Americans keep going back? Don’t be so quick to judge the restaurant, argues the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein. Even respected food writers, like Michael Ruhlman (who recently ate there on a dare), can’t help but admit dishes like the miso salmon and the crispy beef really are good. Yes, the number of
calories in the dishes are astronomical (1,673 in the salmon). But as Klein points out “Calories are delicious.” Which is why the obesity crisis is such a problem. It would help if people were better educated about how many calories they’re ingesting, but the Cheesecake Factory is doing what any good business/restaurant does. It’s giving people good food that they enjoy,
at a good value.

The Washington Post

Vatican impressed with the new Harry Potter film

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 11:30 AM - 2 Comments

In its review of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Roman said it accurately represented the conflict of good vs. evil. While criticizing Rowling for leaving out any direct “reference to the transcendent” in her books, L’Osservatore felt the latest movie made clear that good should always triumph over evil “and that sometimes this requires costs and sacrifice.” The paper also praised the film’s treatment of adolescent romance, noting it found the “correct balance.” These remarks follow the sharp criticism of the Harry Potter series by an Austrian priest earlier this year. The Reverend Gerhard Maria Wagner said that the Harry Potter novels were satanic. He was, in turn, offered a promotion by Pope Benedict XVI.

The Independent

Behold a Red Rider

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 10:51 AM - 0 Comments

“The Mounted Police are mounted again,” the Toronto Star trumpets today in its report on the triumphant return to Parliament Hill of two of Canada’s most picturesque agents of the state, RCMP musical ride retirees Hector and Ike, and their scarlet-clad human handlers. Two years ago, the RCMP ordered the pair confined to a corral over safety concerns, but this year, they came up with a classically Canadian solution: One Mountie on horseback, and another on the ground. “If somebody gets too near (Hector) or a child goes under him, something could happen,” trainer Sgt. Jerry Mayo explained. “Now we have someone to say, `Okay, don’t stand there.’ ”

Toronto Star

Fertility breakthrough for cancer patients

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 10:50 AM - 0 Comments

There is a new fertility option on the horizon for women whose cancer treatments destroy their ability to reproduce. Researchers from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine have developed a technique which sees a good quality egg grow from an isolated tiny sac called a follicle. The follicles are taken from ovarian tissue before cancer patients undergo chemotherapy and radiation, and are grown in the laboratory. “By being able to take an immature ovarian follicle and grow it to produce a good quality egg, we’re closer to that holy grail, which is to get an egg directly from ovarian tissue that can be fertilized for a cancer patient,” says Teresa Woodruff, chief of fertility preservation at the Feinberg School. This is the first time an ovarian follicle has been isolated and scientists hope the new procedure will allow them to successfully induce the egg’s final division, where it sheds half its DNA in order to become fertilized.

Science Daily

More Reductiveness, Or Why Good TV Needs To Be Bad

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 6:34 PM - 2 Comments

This is a post that I’ve started without really thinking it out much, so I don’t know where it will go, but: I was evaluating my own TV-viewing interests (not an interesting exercise in and of itself), and came to the conclusion that my favourite shows often can be described as “good-bad shows.” The term “good-bad movie” used to be somewhat popular among critics to refer to a movie that was somehow disreputable or formula-ridden or silly, and yet managed to use that format to achieve a certain energy and power that a more prestigious film (literary adaptation, historical epic) could not. Good-bad TV is similar. It’s TV that does not exactly get beyond the limitations that make television artistically disreputable — the cliches, the chasing after trends, the storytelling and character formulas — and uses its own lack of class and prestige to its own advantage.

This is different from a “guilty pleasure.” A guilty pleasure is something that you know isn’t good (or at least think isn’t good) but you like anyway. (So I’m not talking about any of the guilty-pleasure or enjoyably bad shows I’ve discussed recently.) A “good-bad” show is one that is genuinely good, but is also recognizably similar to shows that aren’t good. In movies, a great 100-minute medium-budget, non-epic gangster film is going to be a lot like a non-epic gangster film that isn’t great; a great Western shoot-’em-up (again, leaving your Deadwoods and other epic or revisionist Westerns out of this) shares lots of story points and style points in common with a bad one. On TV, it’s the same way. A prestigious, “good-good” show prides itself on uniqueness in approach and style. A “good-bad” sitcom or teen show or action show is different only in terms of quality, of how it turns the formula and the cliches into something interesting.

At their best, good-bad shows have a vitality that more obviously high-quality shows lack, and a richness that comes from the way it plays with us as viewers. The good-bad show fulfils all the expectations we bring to the genre (because we know the formula by heart) while also surprising us with the variations on the basic, familiar themes. And the hint of cliche or cheesiness about the good-bad show can at least prevent it from becoming boring or self-satisfied.

This, for example, is why I have a major fondness for the first two seasons of Buffy, which mixed new approaches and character development with a considerable quantity of cheese (sometimes parts of episodes, sometimes whole plots). It was the struggle between the two halves of the show, the emotionally-involving drama and the cheesy teen adventure, that made it so interesting to watch; the more prestigious the show became, the less interesting I found it to watch (and the less fulfilling I found the big, un-cheesy moments to be).

This is not to say, however, that good-bad TV is superior to prestigious TV, any more than a great low-budget gangster movie is superior to The Godfather. But the value of a prestigious, self-evidently ambitious show is easy to see. The good-bad show reveals its secrets more slowly and makes us work to see its value. In a weird way, it’s sometimes more challenging viewing.

Election fatigue?

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 6:07 PM - 7 Comments

So Jean-Pierre Blackburn wants the Bloc to hold off on defeating the Conservatives until the spring, because “it’s not sound to have municipal and federal elections going on at the same time.”

I haven’t had to deal with too many campaigns since moving to Toronto in 2006. But Blackburn’s comment got me thinking about just how many votes have taken place in my old stomping grounds of Montreal’s Outremont riding in the past five years:

• June 28, 2004: Federal election
• November 6, 2005: Municipal elections
• December 12, 2005: Provincial by-election
• January 23, 2006: Federal election
• March 26, 2007: Provincial election
• September 17, 2007: Federal by-election
• December 16, 2007: Municipal by-election*
• October 14, 2008: Federal election
• December 8, 2008: Provincial election

That’s eight nine (!) votes in five years. Assuming election signs stay up for six weeks—five weeks before a vote and one week after, give or take a few days—my former neighbours have had to stare at elections signs for a ungodly grand total of 336 378 days since the summer of 2004.

I don’t know if Blackburn’s right and there really is such a thing as election fatigue, but if there is, Outremont might be as good a place as any to start looking for it.

Queen costs us more than the Brits pay

By Katie Engelhart - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 6:00 PM - 198 Comments

Robert Finch has a favourite saying: “For the price of a cup of coffee, Canadians can enjoy the stability of the Crown.” By this, the chief operating officer of the Monarchist League of Canada means that the monarchy costs Canadians only $1.53 per capita each year, about the price of a large cup of joe at Tim Hortons. But in fact, Canadians are now paying more per capita to support the Queen than the British are.

According to the latest figures out of Buckingham Palace, while Canadians are shelling out $1.53 per capita, the British are only paying about $1.32. And the Monarchist League’s own numbers show the Canadian cost is skyrocketing. Over just the last 10 years, the per capita bill for supporting the monarchist framework— including expenses incurred by the royal clan on Canadian soil, as well as the cost of running the offices of the Governor General and our 10 provincial lieutenant-governors—has more than doubled. Continue…

What the Tories need to do in Quebec

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 5:38 PM - 32 Comments

Amid the gloom of polls placing them behind even the NDP in Quebec, the Conservatives hosted a fundraiser in Montreal in May at the posh Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Some 2,000 people attended the Tory pow-wow, the largest Conservative event in the province in five years. And in case the evening’s theme—”We’re taking root in Quebec”—wasn’t clear enough, Stephen Harper took to the podium to insist rumours of the party’s death in the province had been greatly exaggerated. “They’ll never again be able to say that I wrote off Quebec,” he said. “Our party and our organization are getting stronger in all parts of Quebec, including Montreal.”

Meanwhile, organizers were scurrying across the room, pleading with attendees to keep quiet during the PM’s speech. Despite shelling out $150 for the privilege, diners didn’t appear particularly interested in listening to what Harper had to say. In fact, Harper didn’t even get the evening’s warmest reception. That privilege went to Maxime Bernier.

According to pollster Nik Nanos, Harper has become the “lightning rod of discontent” for Quebec voters. And in order to compensate for the rapidly souring relationship, he suggests Harper should allow prominent local candidates to take his place as the centrepiece in any future election campaign. Bob Plamondon, a longtime Conservative and the author of Blue Thunder: The Truth about Conservatives from Macdonald to Harper, goes even further. He says Harper needs to strike a power-sharing agreement with someone able to countenance the prime minister’s sharply partisan instincts when it comes to Quebec. It’s the only way, Plamondon says, for Harper to avoid making missteps like those on culture and young offenders that are widely credited with sinking his chances of a majority in the last election campaign.

“I don’t think it was so much that those specific policies were abhorred by Quebecers,” Plamondon says, “because in the scheme of government activities, they are relatively minor issues. But they spoke to larger issues—does Stephen Harper understand Quebec and can he be trusted? I think Quebecers drew the conclusion that he’s disconnected from them. They couldn’t identify among Harper’s team a particularly strong lieutenant who had near-veto power over what went on in Ottawa with respect to those matters that are of particular concern to Quebecers.”

So far at least, the Conservatives have opted for another tack entirely. Instead of appealing to Quebecers’ parochial instincts by slapping a familiar face on the Tory brand, they’ve sharpened their attacks against the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals in an attempt to tear down their opposition. This past spring, they launched an ad campaign that attempted to portray Michael Ignatieff as an ultra-federalist snob whose French is spoken with an accent “de France.” And late last month, the Conservatives mailed out flyers to voters in Bloc-controlled ridings that Bloc MPs said accused them of siding with child traffickers. While it may seem counter-intuitive for the Tories to return to the ideological territory that may have played a role in derailing their campaign in 2008, a spokesperson for Conservative MP Christian Paradis, Harper’s Quebec lieutenant, says the party plans to stick with the tough-on-crime pitch to Quebecers.

It’s still early, but neither a breakthrough on crime, nor a complete collapse of support for the opposition parties, nor a move by Harper to share the stage with a prominent Quebec figure (like, say, former ADQ leader Mario Dumont), appears likely. The Tories may therefore have to woo Quebec the old-fashioned way: more power. “Harper still has one arrow left to shoot,” says Tom Flanagan, a political science professor at the University of Calgary and a former campaign manager for the Conservatives. “He’s not yet fulfilled his 2006 campaign platform promise, repeated since then, to limit the federal spending power. That would be popular in Quebec, as well as with conservatives in other provinces who don’t want to see the federal government undertaking new social programs.”

With the spectre of a fall election looming, the pressure will likely mount on Harper to do something—anything—to appease his critics in the province. After all, nearly two months have passed since the fundraiser in Montreal and there are few signs Quebecers are holding Harper any closer to their hearts. The latest Léger Marketing poll puts the Tories in roughly the same shape they were back in May—at just 11 per cent, the Tories are 21 points behind the Liberals and the Bloc and trailing the NDP by four points, which puts the party in line to see most of the gains it made in Quebec in 2006 wiped out. “In a way, it’s a bit like retro hour,” says Nanos. The Conservatives’ fight for relevance, he says, is eerily similar to the one faced when the Progressive Conservatives merged with the Canadian Alliance in 2004. But while their return from Quebec’s political wilderness in the ’06 election may provide some inspiration, the only thing that matters now is whether they can do it again.

Status in the age of digital reproduction

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 5:11 PM - 15 Comments

My column for the mag this week is on status and art in the age of mass digitization — it riffs off a great piece that was in the wsj a while back about a neat thing a dude in Brooklyn is doing with a Sufjan Stevens tune he “won”. The broader context for this is what becomes of status signaling when so many signs of status rest on displaying “hard copies” of things that are easily digitizable. The solution, I argue, is a form of contrived scarce materiality or, alternatively,  ephemerality.

The question arose in a different context last week, when a handful of bloggers started wondering how they’d be able to show off what a cool/smart/profound intellect they are in the age of Kindle, when their literary tastes are no longer on display. Julian Sanchez has the answer:

Your Facebook profile will dog you like one of those floating Sims icons. You won’t just know what the girl sitting across the coffee shop is blasting on her iPod, you’ll be able to listen in. All the tech is actually here already, if not in quite the fancy form it’s implemented at the link above. All it would take is for someone to integrate the location-sensitive functions of an app like Loopt into the apps for Facebook or Last.fm, and you’ve got a point-and-profile system.

The main thing to keep in mind is that this is not a “problem” in any meaningful sense. As long as people are status conscious, they will always find ways of signallng it.

"We apply laws to facts; we don't apply feelings to facts."

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 5:06 PM - 0 Comments

When questioned during the second day of hearings about whether she would be an “activist” judge, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor sought to make it clear to the judiciary panel that her past would not determine how she rules on cases. “We [judges] apply laws to facts; we don’t apply feelings to facts,” she said. Sotomayor was also asked if the famous Roe v. Wade case was “settled law.” “The court’s decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirmed the court holding of Roe,” she said, making reference to a 1992 ruling. “That is the precedent of the court and settled, in terms of the holding of the court.” Despite the feelings of some Republicans, Sotomayor is virtually guaranteed to be confirmed–Democrats have a 12-to-seven advantage on the panel and 60-to-40 majority in the Senate.

The New York Times

The Corner Gas Reality Tour?

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 4:27 PM - 1 Comment

Via TV, Eh?, an update on the situation of the Corner Gas set in Rouleau, Saskatchewan. Since the actors packed up and went home, the area that served as the show’s main location (it played the part of the fictional Dog River) has become dilapidated: it’s not being used for film production, the people who own it and rented it to the production company don’t want to sell it, and the place has become both an eyesore and a disappointment to people who come to get a look at the real Corner Gas. The production company is still renting the place, wanting to keep up its option in case other Gas projects (like a film), but nobody seems to have money to fix up the area.

Turning a movie or TV set into a tourist attraction, which is what is apparently being discussed in the article (the question is whether the tourism is worth the money it would cost to restore the set), is a bit pointless — it’s like those tours in Boston that take you past the bar where the Cheers exteriors were filmed — but it can sometimes be good business. If people can go to see backlots and deserts that were dressed up to look like Western towns, why not a small Saskatchewan town that was dressed up to look like… a small Saskatchewan town?

This Is Either Edgy, Or Stupid, Or Both

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 3:28 PM - 7 Comments

One thing I forgot to include in my weekend post — about why Unhappily Ever After has turned out to be the better of Kevin Connolly’s two shows — is this clip, which may be the closest thing this show had to an iconic moment (well, that and all the scenes of drunken audience members hooting at Nikki Cox), and sort of sums up why this crass, stupid, cheap (it was literally the lowest-budgeted scripted network show of its era) has gained a certain cult following. The hero talks to his imaginary friend about how to deal with his daughter’s unsuitable boyfriend, and they spend three minutes discussing the best solution: kill the boyfriend, and then kill six random strangers so that the police will look for a motiveless serial killer.

It is at once really dark and really stupid, but you’ve got to give them credit for doing a sequence you wouldn’t see on other comedies — on broadcast, HBO or any self-respecting network. There are some network TV shows that are the equivalent of Roger Corman movies: they have no money, they’re obviously ripped off from other projects, and they’re crass and exploitative, Continue…

C.I.A. plotted to assassinate al-Qaeda figures

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 3:09 PM - 8 Comments

Current and former U.S. government confirmed to the New York Times the C.I.A. had preliminary plans to dispatch paramilitary teams of assassins to kill al Qaeda figures around the globe. Despite running into legal, logistical and diplomatic obstacles, the spy agency reportedly kept the plans alive under pressure from the Bush administration. Current C.I.A. Director Leon Panetta shut the program down the day before he told the two Congressional Intelligence Committees it had been kept hidden from elected officials under orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney. The Times’ sources say no one involved with the program, which was devised in the wake of 9/11, ever submitted a specific operation for approval by the White House.

The New York Times

For your "And here's a lower place" files: Let's all fight over which party the accused rapists support!

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 2:55 PM - 117 Comments

Seriously, this is just — horrible, depressing, totally uncalled for and the kind of thing that gives political black ops a bad name. The same goes for posting pictures of the accused with certain cabinet ministers  – and really, that’s all ITQ has to say about that.

Sonia Sotomayor Rips Off Woody Allen

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 2:03 PM - 0 Comments

We now know the really damning charge against U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor: she’s clearly a plagiarist. Today at her Senate hearing, she totally ripped off Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. The top Republican on the committee, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, quoted Reagan judicial appointee Miriam Cedarbaum (she was nominated at the same time Sessions was, but his nomination was rejected by the Senate; he then wound up being elected to that self-same Senate) to make a point against Sotomayor. Sotomayor replied that “my friend Judge Cedarbaum is here [in the room],” and that “we both approach judging in the same way.” Cedarbaum later told the Wall Street Journal that she agreed with Sotomayor.

This is, of course, exactly what happens in the scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen listens to a guy pontificate about Marshall McCluhan, and imagines bringing on McCluhan himself to tell the guy that “you know nothing of my work.” Can the Senate afford to confirm a judge whose real life is apparently taken beat for beat from Woody Allen’s fantasy life? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

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