The Man who Mistook his Girlfriend for an Intruder and Other Observations

"Girlfriend in a Coma" - The Smiths

- Can I just note that I find Oscar Pastorious's claims that he shot his girlfriend because he thought she was an intruder to be about the least credible thing I've heard since OJ dedicated himself to finding the real killers.  Jesus.  Maybe our defense lawyer friends can open my mind, but Christ this seems preposterous.

- I don't know about you, but I have this sense that Lindsey Graham is in the habit of acting out the flogging scene in Lawrence of Arabia with John McCain playing the Jose Ferrer role and that he uses "Benghazi" as his safe word. 

- Roy has been cracking me up with his coverage of the "Downton Abbey" is the greatest conservative show ever meme in the right wing blogosphere.  Now I confess to being a Downton watcher and to also understanding that it is pretty much just a highfalutin' soap opera, so I won't make fun of its appeal.  But the idea that one could walk away from it thinking that it is somehow an affirmation of contemporary right wing values is a bit much.  Especially given the aristocratic disdain for hard work and capitalism portrayed throughout the series -- to be a "tradesman" is about as damning a sin as there could -- it is fascinating to see the wingers try to call this world their own.  They are strange little people.

- Speaking of BBC series, I did actually start watching the original House of Cards again and want to once again urge any of you who have not seen it to check it out.  It's absolutely fabulous as they say.  I'd like to see our winger friends claim it as a testament to conservative values. 

Time for bed.  Leave your defenses of Pastorius, Graham, and costume dramas in comments.

Consider it an open thread as well.

Comments

[Greg]

The original House of Cards is much better than the current incarnation (not because Kevin Spacey isn't a great actor) but simply that politics just don't work that way in the United States. The entire trilogy is well worth your time.

[kathy a.]

ok, the discussion of downton abbey is hilarious! i confess my addiction.

[oddjob]

- I don't know about you, but I have this sense that Lindsey Graham is in the habit of acting out the flogging scene in Lawrence of Arabia with John McCain playing the Jose Ferrer role and that he uses "Benghazi" as his safe word.

LOLOLOL!!!!!!!

You do know that's meant to cover the (anal) raping that Lawrence experienced at the hands of his Turkish captors, yes?

[oddjob]

i confess my addiction.

I've only started watching Downton during this 3rd season. I like the acting, but I can also plainly see it's a highfalutin' soap opera.

On the other hand, wasn't Upstairs/Downstairs the same? Wasn't Gosford Park?

When exactly are these sorts of stories not soap operas??

[Bill H]

Apparently Pastorious thought the burglar has locked himself in the bathroom. Hmmm. Burglars are not known for intelligence or for extreme logic in their actions, but locking one's self in the bathroom seems like unlikely action by the average burglar. That would not be the first place I would look for a burglar while toting my trusty hand cannon, and if someong was in the bathroom my first thought would probably not be "burglar."

[Sir Charles]

Bill,

Yeah -- plus you think you might notice that your sleeping companion wasn't in bed.

If middle of the night trips to the bathroom are this perilous I may have to invest in a kevlar vest.

[paula]

Think steroids! Even if he calls them herbs.

[paula]

RE; Pistorius. The new reality is, at the very beginning of a romantic relationship, you need to get an overview of family/marital/medical history. OR, at the very least, find out if there are guns in the house before spending the night.
Public health physicians tell parents to ask about guns in the house before letting kids visit or sleep over with friends. Once, such a question would have signaled helicopter parenting, but today it's common sense.

[Sir Charles]

paula,

Roids and nine millimeters -- a bad combination.

One of the benefits of being an effete liberal in an effete liberal part of the world and sending your kid to school with the children of other effete liberals is that is cuts way down on the likelihood of a gun being around the houses your kid visits.

[Greg]

@Bill -- I was reading Amy Davidson's (The New Yorker) recap of Pistorius' bail hearing yesterday and the defense attorney made mention of the fact that this isn't news in South Afirca (that burglars sometimes lock themselves into the bathroom). Counterintuitive I agree but it is out there.

[paula]

Sir C, I wish it were that easy. When you consider the number of guns in the US vs. people, surely a good number of those guns are in homes in your neighborhood, wherever you are. You never know. Look at Newtown and Aurora.
When my son was 12 or 13, he asked to spend the night at a friend's house and I okayed it. When I dropped him off, I stopped in to talk to the mom and she told me how happy she was that he was going to be there that night. It would mean so much to her boy, blah blah. Then she asked me about raising a kid alone, since she was about to become a single parent, too. What? It seemed that her husband (who arrived before I left) was coming home that night from multi-month stay in a mental hospital, where he was treated for depression. Unknown to him, his own father died while he was away. Also, the loving wife had arranged to have him served with divorce papers first thing the next morning, citing emotional cruelty related to his condition. Her plan was to get the kids, the five-bedroom home, all his money, and just get this miserable SOB out of the house. (She told me all this with a smile on her face and the confidence of someone who had planned it all out with a lawyer and accountant.) So, my son was going to be...what? Her shield? I don't know if there was a gun in the house, but I came incredibly close to unknowingly putting my son in a house ready to explode. Of course, I yanked him out of there before he could open his mouth. He was pissed at me, but alive the next day. And, I was just plain lucky.
This was in an fairly affluent neighborhood in suburban NYC.

[Sir Charles]

Greg,

On House of Cards -- I had that same thought -- that American politics just doesn't translate into the story of the rise of an ambitious legislative manipulater. We elect governors and generals and photogenic but not terribly accomplished senators. We will never have a President DeLay.

The parliamentary system is essential to the rise of F.U.

[kathy a.]

paula -- with kids in situations like that (unstable), we ended up asking those kids to come stay over with us. we hosted band practice for many years, too, because at least then we would know what was going on. that didn't save my son from his bad times, but those could have been far worse. and none involved guns.

[kathy a.]

pretty horrifying, though, that the mom thought things would go more smoothly having your son around that particular night. gah.

[Sir Charles]

paula,

Wow, that is quite a heartwarming tale.

And there is definitely a point where it is difficult to know the people that your kid might be visiting. My son went to an exceedingly small school -- 300 kids in 7 grades -- so there was a tendency to have a pretty good feel for most of the parents, but as he got to be a junior and senior and his classmates drove, it meant that we hadn't necessarily met the parents or knew them only superficially, so you're right.

[nancy]

Oh swell. The jokes are going to write themselves. Elk heads. Mounted I trust.

[kathy a.]

ok, this will make you laugh: boehner baby. i don't necessarily approve of this message, but it came from a 20-something person, in response to a post about the freaking sequester.

[Crissa]

The only thing that makes Pistorius's claim credible is that he's actually pulled a weapon on her at least once before, by his own words. On the other hand, they've been seen fighting more than once, including the night in question.

I don't think that alleviates him from guilt, obviously, since he should've known or been made aware that pulling a gun on your housemate is a good indication you probably shouldn't have weapons in easy reach.

My spouse says, the time she was able to shoot two quail from the sky from the hip was the time she realized she shouldn't be toting around a weapon like that. She says it was the last time she carried, even though to this day, her parents still have her guns (and brandished the legal-limit shortened shotgun it at a hungry dog when we visited. The dog was so out of his wits you coulda scruffed him and been done with it, but no, they had to go wave a gun around.)

I can see why she wanted to leave that behind.

[low-tech cyclist]

The South Carolina (the dumbass Carolina, as Charles Pierce calls it) Senate Judiciary Committee just approved a law that would allow concealed weapons permit holders to carry their guns into bars.

The gun-carrying patrons wouldn't be allowed to drink, but how, exactly, would that be enforced? Concealed weapons are, um, concealed.

[low-tech cyclist]

BTW, nice Oliver Sacks reference in the thread title, SC. Just wanted you to know that that didn't slip by completely unnoticed.

[low-tech cyclist]

And in the category of mistaking things for what they're unquestionably not, Ezra lets down the home team by saying: "Mike Allen, as a straightforward and fair a reporter as you’ll find..."

Yeah, that's this Mike Allen.

[kathy a.]

the economist, on how public discussion of the death penalty has changed rather dramatically.

[oddjob]

AFL-CIO & Chamber of Commerce reach agreement regarding what principles ought to be driving immigration reform.

[Sir Charles]

l-t c,

Gee that bums me out about Ezra. He should know better.

My wife was once interviewed by Mike Allen and I am friendly with someone who used to edit him at the Post. Consensus -- he is really a dumb ass.

And a right wing dumb ass at that.

[Greg]

@l-t c & s c -

Not sure what the opinion of the gang here is of Ezra Klein (full disclosure he graduated from my HS 2 years after me, I didn't know him then) but this seems precisely the sort of power play that Ezra is all about. Just as he slagged off Alan Simpson with one hand, he's gotta keep his other hand firmly in embrace of the rest of DC élite.

[Sir Charles]

Greg,

It's been quite some time ago, but I got to know Ezra a little bit several years ago and I was quite impressed with him. A very smart and charming young guy, an incredibly hard worker, and a person with a gift for social interaction with a purpose. Even then he tried to bend over backwards in terms of fairness to others -- I recall walking down the street with him bitterly denouncing Joe Klein and he, a good 25 years my junior, was making the case that the bad Klein was not actually the devil incarnate.

I think that what he has accomplished professionally is pretty remarkable and that in the process he has retained a shocking amount of his integrity. He has largely succeeded on the basis of substance, he works hard to master issues, to write logical and lucid prose, and to avoid the kind of bullshit that is the typical stock in trade of the DC pundit.

Having said that, I do think that being at the Post has made him a much less fun read -- he used to be quite funny back in the day -- but that is probably inevitable given where he is writing and the degree of skepticism and hostility that he faced at the Post. He is a very savvy guy in terms of his career and I think he tries to avoid the kinds of verbal savagery that many of us in the left blogosphere, including yours truly, really enjoy.

I also think he has too much faith in wonkery and is overly enamored sometimes of market-based solutions and "rationality" generally.

I think that Chris Hayes, to name someone of his cohort, is a superior thinker and writer because he views the world through a broader ideological and theoretical lens. But then again, I think Chris Hayes is probably about the best pundit out there, so that should not be seen as overly damning.

In short, I admire the guy, but understand his shortcomings. If he were the worst thing in the Post or DC media generally, the universe would be improved by about 1000 percent.

Incidentally, this blog has its origins in Ezra's. Much of the original Cogitamus crew were his weekend bloggers. I was a commenter over there and they asked me to join them when Ezra went off to the American Prospect. Alas, that was some time ago.

[nancy]

One worries that Ezra is being pulled quietly into the Beltway Club. C'mon Ezra. Courtier hasn't/doesn't/won't fit ya.

For whatever reason, Chris Hayes seems more impervious. Bit of a puzzle.

[nancy]

'Courtier'. Well, that was a little rough. My bad.

[Crissa]

Yeah, I kinda think some of Ezra's over kind words are a type of snark. But I don't know him personally; just going off of what 've been taught about over-kind words.

[low-tech cyclist]

Crissa - I think good snark can be used subversively, if it's the kind that will slip by the gatekeepers but the audience will pick up on.

Unfortunately, very little of the WaPo readership will take that as anything but Ezra's honest opinion, even if he intended it as snark. (Which I doubt.)

I don't read Ezra nearly as much as I used to since the WaPo took Wonkblog to its current pain-in-the-neck format, but my sense is that he has had to compromise somewhat in order to fit in over there, to be more 'evenhanded' in the Village sense than he used to have to be.

But even so, he could have just said, "Mike Allen, a mainstream reporter in good standing" or something of that ilk, which actually would have been snark if I'd said it, with the implied resonance of 'Villager in good standing.'

He's still a lot better than anyone else in the WaPo commentariat, and better than all but a couple of their reporters.

[Sir Charles]

nancy,

I don't think Ezra has the courtier about him yet. But he is clearly an ambitious guy and one who is conscious I think of not burning bridges if he doesn't have to.

His mother, who is a lovely soul, used to comment here from time to time.

Crissa,

I think Ezra may deploy some very subtle snark from time to time -- in fact I was wondering if the line about Mike Allen may have been just that, but I tend to think l-t c has it right.

l-t c,

I hate the wonkblog format and am sad that they have done the same thing to Greg Sargent's Plum Line. It's not an inviting space. I do not read wonkblog every day in the way that I used to read Ezra on his own. But I do want him to have good page counts -- that's really important now at the Post. It's one of the reasons I try to avoid reading the daily outrages by Jennifer Rubin. It just encourages them.

[oddjob]

Texas GOP Chair states Hillary has a credible shot at winning Texas if she runs for pres. in '16.

[oddjob]

(Not a likely shot, mind you, but enough of a one that he wouldn't lable Texas a "solid Republican" state that year if she ran.)

[low-tech cyclist]

Quote of the day:

"nothing can be done to your body without your permission...it'd be a violation of the constitutional right to privacy if that were to happen."
-Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA)

Of course, he was talking about a crazy wingnut idea that the government was going to implant microchips in everyone's body. He wasn't talking about, say, transvaginal ultrasounds.

[nancy]

"nothing can be done to your body without your permission...it'd be a violation of the constitutional right to privacy if that were to happen."

I dunno -- there's a paternalistic opportunity there for new industriousness: life begins at ovulation. Maybe before!

Should some of those noble God-driven state personhood laws get passed, don't be surprised if the microchip idea doesn't resurface to seal the deal. Transvaginal microchips: required to record that initial moment of personhood, time and date stamped.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Hello, is it just me or is TP hungrier than usual? I've tried the same comment three times. Each time it got announced as printed and then got eaten. *sigh* Here's hoping this one gets through. just to test, then I'll chatter about what I had to say.

[nancy]

Testing. Are we broken down? Time to start tweeting the Typepad weekend crew?

Or maybe we're all worn out: Sequestration. One wag -- 'when the Pentagon becomes the square.'

Oh, and fuck Bob Woodward. And obviously Brooks too, per usual. It's not journalism, it's theology. @Steve M.

[nancy]

Hey Prup -- I think the problem is that the server has been in and out. It's not you. :-\

My captcha -- 'Wiring' :)

[Crissa]

About sequestration, what do you think of Bob Woodward's 'replacing the sequestration is moving the goalposts' article? It seemed especially pointless. Now that sequestration is on the table, only sequestration is okay to replace sequestration? I don't get it.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/02/sequester-not-same-thing-substitute-sequester

[low-tech cyclist]

Bob Woodward has been so worthless for so long that I don't even pay any attention to him anymore. There is only a technical connection between Bob Woodward of today and the Bob Woodward of 40 years ago.

I'm starting to think the Communists had the right idea about one thing: it's a pity we can't send the entire Village off to a re-education camp.

[oddjob]

That technical connection was broken when he and Bernstein parted ways.

[oddjob]

Thanks to sequestration air traffic controllers will ultimately be furloughed.