On federal holidays, identity politics, presidential immunity, Ismail Kadare, an act of humanity, and more
On July 4, I made a comment that went something like this: “How nice to celebrate a holiday on its actual date — rather than on an official Monday” (nice as a three-day weekend may be). “Our holidays have been Monday-ized,” I groused. But on reflection — is it true? Only partially.
New Year’s Day is — January 1, where it’s supposed to be. Where it must be. Valentine’s Day is not a government holiday, here in the U.S. of A. (anywhere?), but let’s mention it anyway — for it’s always February 14. Heck, let’s go back a couple of weeks to Groundhog Day, which is fixed at February 2 (and in movie history).
Return, now, to official holidays. You got Juneteenth (June 19). Independence Day, as we’ve said. Veterans Day (“the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month”). Thanksgiving (the fourth Thursday). And Christmas.
What about the Monday ones? The always-Monday ones? Martin Luther King Day. George Washington’s Birthday. Memorial Day. Labor Day. And Columbus Day.
So, it’s about half and half: half the “real” date, half an official Monday. I can live with that (in case anybody asked me).
(You may recognize the phrase used in the heading over this column: “a case of the Mondays.” It comes from, or was popularized by, the 1999 movie Office Space. Here’s a quick clip.)
• For the New York Times, Katherine Rosman wrote an excellent report headed “How the War in Gaza Disrupted an Elite Private School.” The subheading reads as follows: “The Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School, like similar institutions across the city, was consumed by strife over how to manage education about the conflict.”
Yes. I have known Little Redders in my time — alumni of that school. But, before I continue, I should probably explain about that strange hybrid name. Actually, I’m going to let Wikipedia explain:
The Little Red School House consists of a lower school, a middle school, and a high school. In the 1940s the Little Red School House’s high-school students decided they wanted their school to be named after its founder, Elisabeth Irwin, making the full title of the institution The Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School.
(For the full entry, go here.)
All right, back to those alumni I have known — and admired: Abigail Thernstrom, Elliott Abrams, and Ron Radosh. A trio of invaluables.
Now I will return to Katherine Rosman’s article — to quote this:
At Ethical Culture Fieldston School, where pro-Palestinian student activism — and backlash — exploded this spring, students are encouraged to join “affinity groups” that align with their racial, religious and cultural identities.
A photograph of young children wearing name tags with their names and identities (“Black,” “Jewish”) was widely shared by distressed parents this spring. A school spokeswoman said those name tags were used only at the beginning of the previous school year — and had been a mistake.
There are affinity groups for parents too.
I am nauseated by this. At the same time, I support freedom of association — and “little platoons” and all the rest. Still, I am nauseated by those “affinity groups,” and by “identity politics” generally. One’s affinity, I believe, should be mainly with the human race.
But these debates have been had since time immemorial, and I will not make much headway in this “breezy lil’ column,” as I have called it since it began (in 2001).
• Eliot A. Cohen was a National Review man, a luminary on our masthead. Bill Buckley admired him a lot, and the feeling was mutual. After a long career in academia — interrupted by two years at the State Department — Professor Cohen has retired. For The Atlantic, he has written a piece titled “Farewell to Academe.” The subtitle says, “I leave with doubts and foreboding that I would not have anticipated when I completed my formal education in 1982.”
Let me paste just a few sentences:
As a politically conservative young professor, I was in a minority — but a large one. More important, I never felt that my views would be held against me by my colleagues. Now I would not be so sure.
• One of the lucky things in my life was to meet, and exchange a few words with, Ismail Kadare, the great Albanian writer. This was on a trip to his country. He has died at 88. “His Novels Brought Albania’s Plight to the World.” That is part of the headline over Kadare’s obit in the New York Times. The subheading says this: “Often compared to Orwell and Kafka, he walked a political tightrope with works that offered veiled criticism of his totalitarian state.”
Yes. He has his detractors — Communists, sure, but also anti-Communists who say he did not go far enough. Was not enough of a dissident. Stayed on the happy side of a prison cell. I understand. People say the same about Shostakovich, to name just one great man in the Soviet Union. I understand that, too.
But Kadare did a lot. Many of us knew about Hoxha’s Albania — the horror of it — because of Ismail Kadare. Grateful for his life, and art.
• By now, you have read a great deal, no doubt, about the Supreme Court’s recent decision on presidential immunity. Republicans like it a lot; Democrats dislike it a lot.
The decision was 6 to 3 — with the 6 being the Republican nominees and the three the Democratic.
A lot of this is “situational,” of course — I’m talking about the enthusiasm for the decision, and the lamentations over it. A Republican, Donald Trump, is in big need of immunity. What if a Democratic ex-president had such a need? What if a Democratic majority on the Court . . .
Well, you take the point. It’s like the Electoral College (and a thousand other things): People like it when it benefits them. Otherwise . . .
I think, too, of an old truth about the Supreme Court: A decision you like today might bite you in the bottom tomorrow.
There are conservatives with doubts about the immunity decision, and more than doubts: Dan Hannan, the America-loving Brit, wrote a column headed “The Supreme Court has opened the door to tyranny.” Quin Hillyer, born in New Orleans, wrote a column for the same publication, the Washington Examiner: “Supreme Court grants Trump a malignant degree of immunity.”
In kindergarten, or thereabouts, we learn, “America is a nation of laws, not men. In our country, no one is above the law — not even the president.” Is that still true? Was it ever? Some people have always regarded it as a polite fiction.
I hope it’s true. I think it ought to be.
In 1973, Nixon said, “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook.” Today, can a president, or ex-president, say, “Yeah, what are you gonna do about it, pal?”
Donald Trump is very pleased about what the Court just did. “THE SUPREME COURT DECISION IS A MUCH MORE POWERFUL ONE THAN SOME HAD EXPECTED IT TO BE,” he wrote. “IT IS BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN AND WISE,” etc.
I would not rely on Trump as a constitutionalist. In December 2022, he was trying to reinstall himself as president. He said that the 2020 election had been stolen from him — “rigged” and all that. He wrote, “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, had a reaction to Trump’s statement: “Let me just say, anyone seeking the presidency who thinks that the Constitution could somehow be suspended or not followed, it seems to me would have a very hard time being sworn in as president of the United States.”
And yet, Trump almost certainly will be, again.
There are people who like the rule of law until they don’t — until it cuts against them, personally. Beware of entrusting such people with power.
• Toward the end, would you like a touch of music? I don’t have a review for you. I don’t have a clip, or track. But I do have a point — a correction. You often hear that a singer has a three-octave range, or even a four-octave one. Almost no one has such a range — even a three-octave range. That would verge on the freakish.
Marilyn Horne, the great mezzo, had a phenomenal range — which stretched two and a half octaves.
I think I know where the problem lies. If people can sing three of the same note, they think they can sing three octaves — when they can sing two. Say you can sing three B flats. The lowest one begins your first octave; the middle one completes it, and begins the second; the highest one completes the second.
Voilà.
• A little language? This has happened to me before. I’ve written about it before, in this column. I’m too lazy to look up what I’ve written. Anyway . . .
You write something and run spell-check. Later, you look at your article — or letter or whatever — and you see a misspelling. Hang on, why didn’t spell-check get that? Because it is a word. Your misspelling, or typo, is a word — a word you don’t (yet) know.
A couple of days ago, I wrote “vision,” or intended to. I saw later that I had typed “vison.” I knew I had run spell-check. So “vison” must be a word. And lo . . .
We’re talkin’ “the American mink.” Live and learn. Mistype and learn.
• Stay on the subject of animals. I was practicing at a golf range in Manhattan. (Not “a” golf range. The only one on the island.) The range juts out into the Hudson River, and is enclosed by a great net — a net open at the top.
On this particular day, practice was halted by staff for a good 15 minutes. There was a seagull, unable to fly out of the range. He — I’ll call the bird “he” — was disoriented or injured. He was unable to get up above the net. He kept trying to fly out but kept flying into the net, leaving him further disoriented or injured. It was pitiable.
The staff lowered the net. The bird still could not fly out. Ultimately, someone scooped up the bird, with a towel, and walked him out.
The range — normally noisy with hitting — was silent, for all that time. The staff had given an example of humanity. I later talked with the head of the staff, who said, simply, “We have to co-exist — human beings and animals alike.”
A little clip:
Thank you for joining me today, everyone. Have a good week.
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