Roger O Green

SCOTUS justice Clarence Thomas turns 70

Among the many dreadful aspects of Clarence Thomas becoming a member of the US Supreme Court is that he succeeded Thurgood Marshall. Marshall founded and served as executive director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, arguing several cases before SCOTUS, including the landmark “Brown v. Board of Education, which held that racial segregation in public education is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.”

Thomas, on the other hand, served as chair of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and “halted the usual EEOC approach of filing class-action discrimination lawsuits, instead pursuing acts of individual discrimination,” which are much more difficult to prove. He had little judicial background when George H. W. Bush nominated him to the high court.

The confirmation hearings were reopened after “an FBI interview with lawyer Anita Hill was leaked… Hill, a black attorney, had worked for Thomas… She testified that Thomas had subjected her to comments of a sexual nature, which she felt constituted sexual harassment or at least ‘behavior that is unbefitting an individual who will be a member of the Court.'”

Thomas denied Hill’s allegations, and famously said: “From my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves… and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.”

In the #MeToo era, The Boston Globe asked in 2018, Why is Clarence Thomas still on the Supreme Court? New York magazine suggests impeachment.

And the grounds wouldn’t just be over sexual harassment. Back in 2011, we learn that Thomas doesn’t just do unethical favors for wealthy right-wing donors — they also do expensive favors for him. Both he and his late colleague Antonin Scalia probably should have recused themselves in the toxic Citizens United case.

And this from 2013: “Common Cause uncovered that Virginia Thomas earned over $680,000 from the conservative think tank, Heritage Foundation, from 2003 to 2007. Justice Thomas failed to include it on his financial disclosure forms… Once he was caught, Thomas amended 13 years’ worth of disclosure reports to include details of his wife’s income.”

A couple yeas ago, an article from Oyez painted a picture of the justice: “Clarence Thomas is known for his quiet, stoic demeanor during oral arguments and his conservative viewpoint that challenges, if not surpasses, even Scalia’s originalism.

“While many justices use questions to show their opinion on an issue or communicate with the other justices as to their feelings on a case, Thomas remains silent… He has shown his opinions to lean farther right than any other justice on the bench today.”

Birthday is June 23

Musician Todd Rundgren turns 70

The concept of Deface the Music by Utopia was to pay homage to The Beatles.

As I am a big fan of the eclectic, I love the music of Todd Rundgren.

I discovered Nazz, or the Nazz, his first, Philadelphia-based band after the group had already broken up. “‘Open My Eyes’ gained belated recognition thanks to its inclusion in Nuggets (1972), the genre-defining anthology of American 1960s garage punk and psychedelia.” He put out many albums, under various band monikers, reportage of which is a task too convoluted to note here. Check the Wikipedia.

Nor am I going to get into all the albums he produced for other people, including for Badfinger, Grand Funk Railroad, Meatloaf, the New York Dolls, Patti Smith, and XTC – look here.

Here’s somebody’s list of The 10 Best Todd Rundgren Albums To Own On Vinyl, FWIW.

Listen! All by Todd Rundgren, unless otherwise indicated; chart action is from Billboard Top 100:

Open My Eyes – Nazz, #112 in 1968
Hello It’s Me – Nazz, #71 in 1969, #66 in 1970 – these songs were the flip sides of each other
Loosen Up – Nazz, parody of Archie Bell and the Drell’s Tighten Up

We Gotta Get You a Woman – Runt, #20 in 1971; it’s unclear if this was a real band or just Todd

I Saw the Light, #16 in 1972
Hello It’s Me, #5 in 1973

Love in Action – Utopia, 1977
Can We Still Be Friends #29 in 1978 – I always find this song extraordinarily sad

Bang The Drum All Day, #63 in 1983; based on his comments playing this with Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band, Todd thinks this is a really dopey song

Coverville 1222: The Todd Rundgren Cover Story II

Now we get to “the albums that Roger owns on vinyl” section of this post:

Deface the Music – Utopia (1980) – “The concept of the album was to pay homage to The Beatles and create songs which sounded very similar to the Fab Four’s tunes throughout the various stages of their career.” If you appreciate the Rutles, you should get this album.
I Just Want To Touch You
Life Goes On
Everybody Else Is Wrong

Swing to the Right – Utopia (1982)
Swing to the Right
One World

A Cappella (1985)
Something To Fall Back On
Pretending To Care
also
Real Man, from the “A Capella” tour

Ask Roger Anything – well, not THAT

I SUPPOSE I don’t mean ANYTHING anything.

The limitations to what I shall, or shan’t, write in this blog is determined by some inner gauge. What I will write about myself has been increasingly not an issue, although I generally don’t indicate, “Hey, here I am in Times Square,” more as a matter of privacy and security than anything. This restriction insures that I will never be one with the zeitgeist, and I’m actually quite good with that.

But I seem not to be particularly concerned about paring my topics. My politics are what they are, and I don’t see them changing anytime soon. Indeed, writing about them helps define my feelings. It’s quite liberating.

Writing about others is trickier. The Daughter, I decided, I would tell her what I was going to write about her. Some stuff she actually WANTS me to post, such as the letter she wrote to the building contractor that our next-door neighbor used. If I mention I want to acknowledge how well she did in school, she rolls her eyes and sighs. But if she were to truly object, I wouldn’t let it see the light of day.

Every three months or so, I ask you all to Ask Roger Anything. I SUPPOSE I don’t mean ANYTHING anything, but, to date, you haven’t made that an issue. I AM curious what you have in mind. In fact, I’ve already received a couple questions.

When you ask anything of me, I am required by my internal code to respond, generally within the month, to the best of my ability. I have not had to use obfuscation very often, though it is allowed – my blog, my rules. You are indeed a polite people.

Per usual, you can leave your questions below or on Facebook or Twitter; for the latter, my name is ersie. Always look for the duck. If you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s fine, but you need to SAY so; you should e-mail me at rogerogreen (AT) gmail (DOT) com, or send me an IM on FB and note that you want to remain unmentioned; otherwise, I’ll assume you want to be cited.

Suicide is not painless

“We scoff at the naivete of those who, a few hundred years ago, attributed such realities to evil spirits.”

One of the worst things about the movie MASH was the title of the theme song, “Suicide is painless.” Of course, if you’ve ever have been a survivor of suicide – I have been fortunate not to be in that category – it is full of pain for those left behind.

I must tell you that I had no idea who Kate Spade was, but I see her impact on fashion was evidently huge. One of many things I hated in the reportage was that her brother-in-law, comedian David Spade, was “breaking his silence” less than two days after her death. The expectation that we are somehow OWED a statement from her loved one rankles me.

Conversely, I was really sad about the death of Anthony Bourdain, chef, travel host and author, at 61. Early on, I thought he was a real jerk, but as he evolved and – I thought – had faced his demons, he became quite the raconteur, telling stories about food around the world.

Matthew Cutler, a rabbi, wrote When living hurts…, which I found useful.

The network news has actually plugged the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (800 273 talk) multiple times and pointed to info such as recognize the signs of suicide and find help. I wish it were that simple.

Still, I think Michael Rivest, a guy I know IRL, is also correct when he wrote: “In light of the media attention given to Anthony Bourdain’s suicide, it was inevitable that it would flush out those who see suicide as a cowardly ‘choice.’ These are usually the same people who see addiction as a choice, along with poverty, anxiety, sexual orientation, etc.

“We scoff at the naivete of those who, a few hundred years ago, attributed such realities to evil spirits, yet now we fall for the self-satisfied canard that people somehow ‘choose’ to be in pain, or to be victims of social injustice. Sometimes, things only look like a choice to those for whom they would be.”

Read how Amy Biancolli takes on the ‘selfishness’ of suicide.

X is for X-rays, WWI and Marie Curie

One major obstacle was the need for electrical power to produce the X-rays. Marie Curie solved that problem.

Marie Curie, née Sklodowska, is probably the most famous woman of science ever. She engaged in “groundbreaking work on radioactivity”, and became the first person to win the Nobel Prize in two different fields.

“In July 1898, Marie along with her husband Pierre Curie, announced the discovery of a new chemical polonium, naming it after her native country Poland. The same year, the Curies discovered radium.

“In 1903, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics alongside Pierre and Henri Becquerel. Eight years later, she won her second Nobel Prize in Chemistry.”

It’s less well known that she was a major hero of World War I.

“At the start of the war, X-ray machines were still found only in city hospitals, far from the battlefields where wounded troops were being treated. Curie’s solution was to invent the first ‘radiological car’ – a vehicle containing an X-ray machine and photographic darkroom equipment – which could be driven right up to the battlefield where army surgeons could use X-rays to guide their surgeries.

“One major obstacle was the need for electrical power to produce the X-rays. Curie solved that problem by incorporating a dynamo – a type of electrical generator – into the car’s design. The petroleum-powered car engine could thus provide the required electricity.

Eventually, using her fame, “she had 20, which she outfitted with X-ray equipment. But the cars were useless without trained X-ray operators, so Curie started to train women volunteers. She recruited 20 women for the first training course, which she taught along with her daughter Irene, a future Nobel Prize winner herself.”

“Not content just to send out her [eventually 150] trainees…, Curie herself had her own ‘little Curie’ – as the radiological cars were nicknamed – that she took to the front. This required her to learn to drive, change flat tires and even master some rudimentary auto mechanics, like cleaning carburetors.”

Yet she experienced the Matilda Effect, the marginalizing of women in science, named for Matilda Gage, an early suffragette. The French Academy of Sciences, founded in 1666, excluded women, such as Marie Curie, though her husband got in, Nobel winner Irène Joliot-Curie, and mathematician Sophie Germain, for nearly three centuries. “The first woman admitted as a correspondent member was a student of Curie’s, Marguerite Perey, in 1962.”

Marie Curie is included in the 2018 book She Persisted Around the World: 13 Women Who Changed History by Chelsea Clinton.

For ABC Wednesday