Quote of the Day posts

“Rep. Devin Nunes, who is bringing a $250 million suit against Twitter because he has been the subject of mean tweets, is not an obscure kook. He is a famous and highly influential kook who chairs the House Intelligence Committee. ...

”Nunes provides almost no arguments to support his demand, which would overturn decades of well-settled legal precedent. In place of the extremely novel Constitutional case he needs to make, his lawsuit asserts that the existence of very mean tweets ‘runs contrary to every tenet of American Democracy, including the guarantees of both the First Amendment and Article I, § 12 of the Virginia Constitution. In the words of the late United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought – not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”’ ...

“You don't have to be a lawyer to understand that this quote—defending the existence of speech from those we hate—supports the exact opposite position from Nunes.”

— Jonathan Chait, “Devin Nunes Files Bonkers $250 Million Lawsuit Over Mean Tweets,” New York Magazine

Today, Trump retweeted:

1. A Pizzagate conspiracy theorist

2. A Qanon conspiracy theorist

3. A conspiracy theorist who believes the New Zealand massacre was a plot to limit gun rights

He's elevating the most unhinged, deranged voices

By tomorrow we'll forget it even happened

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 18, 2019

“A novel is like a mountain. Like Mount Rainier. You ever seen Mount Rainier? It’s like you’re looking at God.”

—Walter Mosley, The Paris Review

I used to think something similar. In the 1990s, I'd be biking along 45th street from Wallingford toward the University district, and I'd be stopped at the stoplight just before the freeway, and if it was a clear day you'd have this great view of Mount Rainier in the distance. It loomed big there for some reason. I'd be hanging and looking at it and just mesmerized. And I'd think, ”If I lived here centuries ago, I'd assume that's where the gods lived."

The quote comes via the American Writers Museum in Chicago, which I visited shortly after it opened in 2017. (Hopefully they‘re aware of E.L. Doctorow by now.)

If I had to choose a Great American Novel, it would be either “Huck Finn” (rural, poor, doing the right thing despite mores and one’s own inclinations) or “Gatsby” (urban, rich, remaking oneself to fit a dream). Both speak the American vernacular. Both are in the first person. Maybe the Great American Novel has to be in the first person because we are. 

Pick up “Gatsby” and read that first page. It'll be 100 years old in 2025 and it sounds like today.

Trump tweets, last 24 hrs:

1. My deputy attorney general is a criminal

2. I'm being targeted by an “illegal coup”

3. The people investigating me should be jailed

4. Television networks that air jokes about Republicans should face “retribution”

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 18, 2019