worldwide pablo

...and nor did it fall in a day

In his day job, WWP gets to mingle with all manner of smart people. Among his many favorites is Josh Marquis, the affable, likable district attorney of Clatsop County in Astoria, who penned this op-ed piece in today's Daily O [first printed in the New York Times].

Don't be befuddled, friends: WWP and Josh probably have at best only about 10 percent overlap in agreement on the day's issues. But it's almost impossible to be cross with someone as personable, bright and engaging [qualities not always mentioned in the same breath as "lawyer," we might add ... but we digress] as the guy who wittily veils himself in e-mails simply as "coastDA." It's fair to say we're both "go along, get along" sort of folk who love the law and the idea of democracy. And we both have blogs.

WWP takes the same view as Josh that a certain, current and execrable ABC television drama is  seriously off the mark and, by virtue of its bad scripts and a questionable dialectic, is destined for cancellation. But after those points, Josh and WWP depart. In the final quarter of his piece, Josh carries on extraneously about some irrelevant Broadway play and then makes this stunning conclusion:

American justice is a work in progress, and those of us charged with administering it are well aware that it needs constant improvement. But nothing is gained by deluding the public into believing that the police and prosecutors are trying to send innocent people to prison. Any experienced defense lawyer will concede he'd starve if he accepted only "innocent" clients. Americans should be far more worried about the wrongfully freed than the wrongfully convicted. [Emphasis added.]

Is anyone else freaked out about that conclusion? Seems to WWP that the syllogism is exactly backward: Americans should be far more worried about the wrongfully convicted than the wrongfully freed -- no?  Isn't this why the criminal justice system is based on a standard of "beyond reasonable doubt"? Isn't this why there's a standard of "innocent until proven guilty"? Isn't this what Coretta Scott King's mate was talking about when he exclaimed, "An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere"? [Famously engraved on the corner of new county courthouse and jail on Portland's S.W. Third Avenue.]

WWP thinks Josh's argument is patently false, wrong and harmful to spirit of what makes our nation great [to say nothing about violating the spirit of the Bill of Rights]. Is "over-imprisonment" of  criminal defendants ever justified? Even at the price of imprisoning the occasionally innocent? Can anyone argue with a straight face that this is what the Founders had in mind? Or those who ratified the Bill of Rights?

More to the point: Exactly when did the utter and inexhaustible idea[l] of individual and civil liberty -- even in the light of reasonable government need -- go missing?

Oh, perhaps no one notices or cares about such matters in this day and age, when the idea of a "unitary president," executive privilege, approved domestic spying and a lack of privacy would shock even George Orwell.

It's facile to compare the present-day United States to the Weimar Republic and its successor in, say, 1933 or so. So, we won't go there. [But strictly speaking, it's not that big a reach, if one limits the discussion to the terms and issues of 1933 alone -- which few humans seem intellectually capable of doing ... which is why no one goes there.]

But it's not so big a a stretch to compare the present times to another republic, nobly founded and knavely foundered.

As they say, "It didn't take a day..."

We stand corrected

In talking about websites we love most, WWP recently remarked on the career and life of author Harper Lee, whose single novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird," has attained and still maintains a place of nearly unrivaled respect in American literature. We commented that the reclusive Ms. Lee hasn't granted interviews since 1963, and it turns out that is not entirely correct. [And we got her age wrong: She's 79, not 80.] It seems that the spritely essayist, who still eschews interviews, has not completely shunned media coverage, at least not for the past four or five years or so, after lending her name to a writing contest involving [who else?] young people.

Today's New York Times sets everything straight, with a lively portrait of the still spritely, ever enigmatic novelist.

Quote of the day

"You have an N.F.L. season, a Nascar season and now an 'Idol' season." 
--Fox Entertainment President Peter Liguouri, about the effect of "American Idol" on American culture [quoted in the New York Times]

To every season, turn, turn, turn. As in, turn away.

A little night music

Eighteen notes, and six rests. Hear them once, and you cannot help but be hooked.

Two hundred and fifty years later [give or take], this guy is still sounding pretty darn good, no?

ThURLsday, part V

Love is a force of nature: Maybe an air force, too?

You knitted what? Seriously, what were they thinking?

Good night, and good luck: Amigo Chuck Currie, a patron saint of the occasional lost cause, offers support for another worthy effort, one which WWP fears is destined to go down in flames. [Don't blame Chuck; he means well.]

Have an interesting URL? Send it to WWP  for consideration in next week's installment of ThURLsday.

Is it 1984 yet?

Apparently, the answer is yes.

How depressing. The day began with realization that Mr. Milquetoast With An Agenda appears headed for a lifetime appointment to the institution that the current reich seems hellbent in turning into a star chamber.  Then came the ever-exhilarating news of more tax cuts for the wealthiest. [All in the name of "stimulating the economy," of course.] Naturally, it wouldn't be a trifecta without bodily control by government.

And then the final blow.  Zounds!

Two for Tuesday

1. WWP's interests in church gossip and the law are well-known, but rarely do these news threads cross paths. Here's a rare exception.

2. Whoa! Had to break out these today. <wishful thinking>Can spring be far behind?</wishful thinking>

Amok

As a blogger, there exist few ways more certain to raise the everlasting hackles of the local cognescenti than to step outside the undecidedly left-of-center's well- and self-defined boundaries of political correctness on two subjects: gay politics and bicycle rights. We've had our share of body hits here when disagreeing with the conventional wisdom that passes for gospel at Basic Rights Oregon [no need to dwell on that further] and our failure to suck up to the City Hall version of "bicycles good, automobiles bad" vision that has earned WWP more than a few shares of hate mail.

And as with so many other memes here in "The City that Works [You Over]" that have come to be accepted without question, it seems beyond the pale to question the certitude of some certain views, among them: aerial tram: good; coordinated traffic flow: bad; parks: only-if-you'll-pay extra [the Vera Katz floating sidewalk boondoggle notwithstanding]; density to the point of medium high-rises in single-family neighborhoods: good; filling in potholes: bad, or at best, ill-advised or unfunded; voter-paid-for elections: well, you get the idea...

How dare anyone stand outside the consensus, eh? Disagree? Move to Beaverton. Disagreement is neither warranted, nor welcome...

Imagine our surprise to see a crack in the conventional wisdom this week, during the Daily O's coverage of a bicycle rider lawsuit. Turns out, the O's articles have unleashed a maelstrom of discontent among the O's readers, many if not most of whom are spurning the idea that cyclists are riding and behaving fairly. Imagine that, that Portlanders on the whole might think that our local cyclists are behaving badly, and perhaps more than that, might behave more badly than cyclists than elsewhere. [It takes a rocket scientist to know that?]

WWP has always wondered: If you're trying to impress people, why would you go so far out of your way to piss them off instead?

Goring the ox

An article in today's Portland Tribune catches our notice, and it scratches at an itch that's been twitching ever since WWP moved to Oregon some 27 years ago: Why are the property rights of builders more important than the property rights of existing owners?

WWP got his start on this topic in 1979, as a reporter for the Grants Pass Daily Courier, when he penned an an ill-fated op-ed piece opining about the expectation of builders in Josephine County to have unlimited building rights at the expense of existing property owners nearby. [If memory serves correctly, the issue had something to do with "fill-in" higher-density neighborhoods in the proximity of older, long-established homes along the Rogue River, the city's fame-to-claim view.] Not long after the ink had dried on WWP's flame-in-print, the Josephine County realtors began to rail against the newspaper and began demanding a retraction or apology. How dare the newspaper challenge the unlimited property right to build as one wishes? Every new property checkmates the last!

The newspaper's owner would have none of that, despite the realtors' considerable ad volume. In fact, John Voorhies, the paper's ever-independent publisher, to his ever-lasting credit, retorted to the local realtor guild with one of his forever classic lines:  "Go piss up a rope." Try as they might to boycott the Daily Courier, the self-importantized realty cudgel never gained traction, and the issue eventually went away. Nevertheless, there remains today an entire neighborhood in Grants Pass, Oregon, whose first-class riverview property values continue to thrive and grow, pretty much at the expense of having taking others' value away.

Fast forward to 2006.

Today's Tribune examines how the views of Mount Hood and the Willamette River, long-cherished by neighborhoods like Corbett-Terwilliger, Lair Hill and others nearby, have -- by virtue of Portland's well-entrenched crony pay-for-play development scheme -- have now been transferred from regular folk so that city hall insiders/developers might resell them for more money to Alexan-like views. [And if you think it's anything less than views they are selling, well, we've got some swampland to sell you.]

There are two views on the matter of transferring property rights, now at conflict. One is the "Kelo" case, which controversially permits municipalities to condemn property in the interest of converting them to being a higher tax-paying properties, so that more property taxes might be collected now and in the future.

And then there is Oregon's Measure 37, which seems to argue the other way. Reduce my property value in any way, and you must pay me the difference, or so the argument seems to go.

And so we wonder: Does the city of Portland, by its actions to improve property in one area [SoWa] at the expense of another [Lair Hill], invoke invitation to Measure 37 scrutiny? In other words: Would property owners in Lair Hill and nearby property owners so obviously and  negatively affected by the Aerial Turd [rimshot] and the eastern concrete/glass wall on the riverside of the so-called SoWa "improvement," now have grounds, as so many others elsewhere  are now claiming, to say: "Okay, screw me;  but now pay me"?

Just wondering.

Make it gay

Of all the places on the Internet where one can while away the hours, none captures WWP's fancy more than the Internet Movie Database, the artgoer's complete online guide to cinema that boasts nearly a half million titles and nearly 2 million registered users. IMDb traces is roots as far back as 1989 [practically the Stone Age for the Internet], when it began as a Usenet group devoted to "actresses with sexy eyes." IMDb changed skins a few times and expanded by bounds in the mid-90s; since 1999, it has been a part of the Amazon.com empire.

Hardly a day goes by when we're not checking a fact at IMDb's unrivaled collection of information, well-known and obscure, about movies, television shows and the artists who create them. [In fact, at times we drop in at IMDb more frequently than we do on blogs, but we digress...]

After taking in the film "Capote" on Monday last, a perusal of the database revealed a few factoids WWP hadn't learned or subtly forgot. Did you remember, for example, that the titular Truman Capote died at the home of Johnny Carson's ex-wife? Or that the 1967 version of "In Cold Blood"  [creepily featuring actor Robert Blake as one of the murderers -- ponder that for a moment] was filmed partly at the original scene in western rural Kansas? Or that author Harper Lee -- whose lone literary output, "To Kill a Mockingbird," won the Pulitzer Prize, and who figures prominently in the making of Capote's seminal "nonfiction novel" -- is still alive at age 80, taking turns between homes in New York and Alabama? [She hasn't done an interview since the Merv Griffin Show in 1963.]

This is pretty intriguing stuff for those like WWP who are fans of the stage and screen. You might even say it's one of WWP's favorite things. And now comes word that there's a companion gay/metrosexual-minded website.

Oh, the Memories.