Reading Roundup for May 2019

“The Lure of Impeachment” by Jamelle Bouie for New York Times: “To reject impeachment in the face of clear wrongdoing would all but prove the provision a constitutional dead letter. But embracing it has pitfalls of its own, like energizing Republican voters in defense of the president. There’s also no chance of conviction in the Senate — Republicans would almost certainly vote to acquit. Democrats could pursue impeachment, but it would be to make a symbolic point.”

“Bullock’s Last Stand: Timothy Olyphant on ‘Deadwood: The Movie’ and David Milch” by Alan Sepinwall for Rolling Stone: “And in the same respect of feeling like I don’t know why these fuckers blew this show up 12 years ago, there’s a tinge of me feeling ripped off that these fuckers didn’t get this thing going sooner. Because what I do miss, without getting too much in the weeds about why I may have not been as interested in this as perhaps others, I always thought if we’re going to do it, we should go back and give David the opportunity to do what he does best, which is multiple episodes.”

“Being black in Nazi Germany” by Damian Zane for BBC News: “In the Nazi era, from 1933 to 1945, African-Germans numbered in their thousands. There was no uniform experience, but over time, they were banned from having relationships with white people, excluded from education and types of employment, and some were sterilised, while others were taken to concentration camps.”

“Court Reporters May Be Writing Down Black People’s Testimonies Wrong” by Leila Ettachfini for Vice: ““In some cases, the errors were not harmful, because they were uninterpretable,” said Taylor Jones, one of the study’s authors and a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. “In others, they changed participants, actions, and order of events.” In 31 percent of the 2,241 transcriptions, researchers found, the court reporters’ errors changed the content of what the speaker was saying, misinterpreting either who was involved, what was happening, when it happened, and/or where it happened. “[These errors] could make or break an alibi in the real world,” Jones said.”

“Mapping the Tongva villages of L.A.’s past” by Sean Greene and Thomas Curwen for LA Times: “The original people of Los Angeles, the Tongva, defined their world as Tovaangar. It extended from Palos Verdes to San Bernardino, from Saddleback Mountain to the San Fernando Valley.”

“Joe Biden Wants To Be The Donald Trump For White People Who Don’t Like Donald Trump” by Albert Burneko for The Concourse: “In many ways, Biden is offering both an appeal to and a balm for Silent- and Boom-generation white people that prefer to look at Donald Trump, himself a boomer born in 1946, and imagine that they are seeing not a creature of the same past to which they themselves belong, but a strange and different sort of monster that’s native to the future they fear. So: America is the Declaration of Independence, high ideals imperfectly but devotedly lived and pursued by courageous, well-meaning people—don’t you remember? “We know it by heart,” Joe Biden says. “We’ve heard it so often it’s almost a cliché, but it’s who we are.” The bad stuff that freaks you out isn’t the America you remember; it’s some hideous new thing called into being from elsewhere.”

“My Rapist Apologized. I still needed an abortion.” by Michelle Alexander for New York Times: “I took a deep breath. Her question took me by surprise, and yet I had been waiting for it since the day she was born. I always knew the time would come when I would have to tell my daughters the truth: I was raped. And I had an abortion. One day, you may face these challenges too.”