I wish I knew how to quit you, Kaplan Q&A:
Rochester, N.Y.: What is the purpose of a piece like the one you wrote? Obama is president now and is not likely to nominate himself for the Court.
So why would you speculate about something so far from the realm of reality? Isn’t this kind of silliness exactly what The New Republic is mocked for?
Jeffrey Rosen: The piece is a playful thought experiment, and the topic was suggested by the editors of Outlook. Of course, I don’t think it’s likely to happen — or even that it should. But I thought the hypothetical was worth entertaining, because the qualities that Obama might bring to the Court are ones he might think about in choosing future justices.
norbizness
Here’s a suggestion: You don’t have to quit it at all. Just disable the CTRL, C, and V keys on your keyboard.
JohnR
“The piece is a playful thought experiment”
Aha! It actually makes some sense now – the publication formerly known as The Washington Post is now the on-paper equivalent of Doonesbury’s JJ Caucus – a performance artist, misunderstood by the Great Unwashed.
Napoleon
DougJ, I am pretty sure there is some kind of 12 step program you could enroll in to cure your problem. I mean after all if Tiger Woods can be cured of a sex addiction (and how exactly do you do that) there must be some place in Arizona you can check your self into for 10 weeks until you are better.
DanF
Here’s a playful thought experiment: Rosen would make an excellent stable boy as he likes shoveling shit (although the shit he likes to shovel is usually regarded as less useful than horse manure).
Prattlehorn
You guys are being too nice.
FUCK Rosen and his “because the qualities Obama might bring…”
That’s bullshit.
He wrote it to find yet one more way to delegitimize Obama.
“Hey, he’s not fit to be President. So let’s talk about how he’d be washing my car or shining my shoes.”
danimal
I have a playful thought experiment involving Dick Cheney and a waterboard.
dmsilev
I propose a different gedankanexperiment. We put Rosen in a large box along with a vial of poison gas, a hammer, and a single-photon detector. Then we send in a single photon.
Then we leave the box shut, because really, who cares?
-dms
Mudge
I don’t remember any hypotheticals about either Bush or Palin being smart. Just saying.
geg6
@danimal:
Seriously. Me, too.
gypsy howell
….”playful thought experiment” being Wapo code for “I couldn’t figure out anything of substance to write about”
Linda Featheringill
Actually, Barack Obama would make an excellent Supreme. But it isn’t likely to happen.
If I were in his place, I would be looking forward to the freedom of action that goes along with being an ex-president.
neill
so if Obama assigns some 3- or 4-year-olds the first cut listing of potential Supreme Court nominees, he might want to include in their packet of materials Rosen’s playful thought experiment.
What a fucking retard.
gypsy howell
@Linda Featheringill:
he may get that chance sooner rather than later if he & the rest of the dems don’t get their shit together. Hey, maybe that was his endgame all along — aspire to the post-presidency of Jimmy Carter.
Will
I really couldn’t believe that piece yesterday. It could only have been written by someone as completely unserious as Jeffrey Rosen. Probably the most ridiculous hypothetical I’ve ever read.
It beats Safire’s 2004 prediction that Wes Clark would win the nomination, then somehow give it to Hillary at the last minute. How and why that would happen was left unexplained in the entire column. Much like this Jeffrey Rosen piece of shit.
He might as well have hypothesized Obama personally manning a mission to Mars.
jenniebee
I suppose it’s not entirely without precedent (wasn’t William Howard Taft both president and chief justice?) but as long as we’re already planning Obama’s retirement party one year into his first term, why not just go whole hog and riff about possible sites for his presidential library? I’m betting they could find someone to write something subtly incendiary enough about the desirability of various Chicago* neighborhoods to dog-whistle Mayor Daley into a response, at which point you have zomg! controversy!
*The Obama library should totally be on Oahu anyway. You don’t get a slavishly dedicated (and attractively tanned) cadre of Obama scholars by putting your library in Chicago. That’s all I’m saying.
bayville
I believe Mr. Rosen is much too polite. This obviously was a sudden decision by Post editors since Sally Quinn had to leave suddenly for emergency wedding planning duty .
John Dillinger
How about this “playful thought experiment” for the WaPo. Pretend they have a time machine to go back to 2000, and use actualy journalistic capabilities to warn its readers what would happen if Bush was elected instead of Gore.
tc125231
It’s not that hard to cold turkey. Just do it. I did.
jim
As a “thought experiment” it’s reasonable to speculate that Barack Obama being appointed to the Supremes would radically improve their overall calibre.
Ditto Bill Clinton.
To judge by their most recent major decision, at this point the same benefit could be said to result in regards to appointing the Olsen Twins – or a lawn-gnome & a Chia Pet.
Zandar
“We’ve already got one black guy on the Supreme Court. We’re sure Republicans wouldn’t filibuster another.”
bayville
Funny. Is this you as well?
Tiger Woods
A.Howard Kurtz writes:
DougJ
@bayville:
No, I wish I had written that though.
fraught
“playful thought experiment,” isn’t that a perfect description of masturbation?
freelancer
@DougJ:
It’s probably Wonkette, but it definitely sounds like you.
licensed to kill time
DougJ, you can’t quit the Kaplan Q&A – it’s too damn amusing for us! Just like a pusherman you got us hooked, too (first question is always free) and a serious jones would result if you stopped.
Don’t cut us off, bro!
SiubhanDuinne
This is about the New York Times, not WaPo, but generally conforms to the theme of this thread.
About 6:30 this morning, I posted on the only active thread at the time (Anne Laurie’s music open thread) about an obvious and egregious error of fact in Douthat’s column, in which he identified Senator John Ensign as being from Arizona. (I didn’t bother to comment on the column itself, as it was beneath contempt and beyond ridiculous.) In my 6:30 post I bemoaned not only the error by someone who is supposed to be so knowledgeable about politics, but also the fact that no one in the NYT’s editing/fact-checking/proofreading process had caught it.
“Arizona Sen. John Ensign” was up for at least five hours, to my certain knowledge — not sure what time it was uploaded, but it wasn’t corrected until almost noon today.
And now I am peeved all over again. Whatever happened to the NYT’s former policy of pointing out even minor corrections when they’re made? — something like “Sen. John Ensign is from Nevada, not Arizona as originally indicated. We have corrected the item and regret the error.” They *always* used to do this. But now, they have made the correction (good!) but say nothing about having made the change, which I think is cowardly of them.
Sheesh, if John and DougJ can make corrections on a blog and (usually) acknowledge that they’re doing so (“Fixed it, thanks”), why can’t the damn New. York. Times?
I don’t mean to make so much of Douthat’s single error of fact — we’ve all done things like that, and worse — and if it were an isolated instance I wouldn’t mention it. But that it made print (pixel) is symptomatic of a huge decline in rigorous newsroom standards. Leaving aside the mammoth issue of editorial judgement, which is really a different topic, it would be nice to think that the paper of record could get a factual attribution right, or at least own up to their original error when they make the correction (which is a kind of implicit promise to the reader that they’ll try to do better next time).
The above comments refer only to the online version. Haven’t seen the dead-tree edition.
/rant (for the moment)
DougJ
@SiubhanDuinne:
Nex time that happens, do a screen shot and send it to us. I love finding errors like that.
flounder
I can’t quit it either:
Justin
I think that’s a fair response by Jeff.
The Wall Street Post has so many ridiculous op-eds, that I’m not sure progressives should be looking for something to be offended about.
Brachiator
@jenniebee:
So, as long as this bonehead is doing thought experiments, how about one in which both Clintons and Obama are all appointed to the Supreme Court, with Obama as Chief Justice?
And then ask the GOP what they think of this.
Even more incendiary would be the suggestion that Obama’s presidential library might be located outside the United States, following the lines of birther insanity.
SiubhanDuinne
@DougJ #27: Glad to if I knew how to do a screen capture on the BlackBerry.
SiubhanDuinne
@Brachiator #30: I love it! Put the Obama prezlib in Kenya. Or Indonesia. Or Hawaii. One of them furrin places.
freelancer
@Justin:
Then what would progressives do with themselves?
In my liberal education, I became educated about liberals, and the huge emotional draw of a large swaft of lefty activism amounts to little more than feeling good about yourself. They may have the facts, and the logic on their side, but it doesn’t mean that the largest motivator for the unhinged left is self-esteem and fulfilling unresolved emotional needs.
/hippie-punching.
freelancer
@Brachiator:
I’d bookmark this post, because you know it’s going to come up, and this is the first time I’ve heard reference to it.
HyperIon
@SiubhanDuinne:
FYI It has been acknowledged.
I saw it about an hour ago.
SiubhanDuinne
@HyperIon #35: Thanks for the update. I’m still not seeing any acknowledgement, just the corrected column copy. Maybe it doesn’t show up on mobile devices, in which case I withdraw that part of my criticism and apologize to the NYT (and to all of you for carrying on unnecessarily).
tomvox1
Circle. Jerk.
Maybe this douche can write a follow-up about the hypothetical that Obama might clone himself and subsequently nominate his clone to the Supreme Court since he is the one he’s been waiting for to be a future justice…or something.
sparky
as usual, good setup for a clever headline, so good on you. any nibbles from the NY Post?
but, uh, seriously, (and as you well know) Rosen teaches law. that means he gets paid to dream up wacky hypos. to the extent there’s an issue here (as distinct from the usual institutional failures of the corporatist media) it’s the disappearance of the notion that an editor (distinct from today’s celebrity-enabling copy-approver) would have said, upon being presented with this idea, “get your head out of your ass and go think up an actual idea as opposed to this jerk-off junk.”
Come back Mr. Shawn!
SiubhanDuinne
@DougJ #27
@SiubhanDuinne #31
Well I’ll be damned. Turns out there *is* a way to copy-and-paste in the ‘Berry. I had no idea! That Google doohickey all you kids use, that’s quite something.
This will make Life at Balloon-Juice much easier.
(Still don’t know how to do an actual screen grab but c-‘n’-p will do it for now.)
DougJ, it may not have been your intention, but you’ve managed to provide me with a whole new skill set today. Thanks!
liberal
Rosen has a long history as a douchebag. Greenwald had an excellent post on Rosen’s despicable article on Sotomayor (latter was in the hasn’t-been-liberal-since-the-1970s TNR).
DougJ
@SiubhanDuinne:
Glad I could inadvertently be of help.
liberal
@freelancer:
Well, that might be, but the good thing about being a liberal/leftist is that at least some fraction of the grouping isn’t unhinged. Can’t say that about the right or the so-called “middle”.
serge
“But I thought the hypothetical was worth entertaining, because the qualities that Obama might bring to the Court are ones he might think about in choosing future justices.”
And if a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his ass so much.
Does this mean I kin rite for the WP? (My hometown paper and a travesty now. Except for Sally Quinn who’s been entertaining all of DC for decades, though not in the salon sense…though she has been known to “entertain,” just ask a younger Ben Bradlee, well you get the drift.)
liberal
@jim:
Problem with Clinton is the same one with Sotomayor: might not live that long.
We need to appoint liberal jurists who will live a long, long, long time.
liberal
@John Dillinger:
Since those douchebags still think the (criminal decision) to invade Iraq was the right one, I’m not sure they’d do that even if they could.
Bush probably lowered their taxes, too, so what’s not to like?
matoko_chan
yeah like Reihan’s “playful thought experiments.”
He said i was contemptuous of my one-time conservative comrades.
Sowwy Reihan, Conor and company……it isnt contempt……
it is horrified incredulous loathing.
CalD
playful thought experiment = wanking off = playful thought experiment
kathequa
Really?