"Ann: Used to be a frequent reader. But, it has become a waste of time trying to understand what you are attempting to cryptically express in your blog posts these days."

"I wish to stay informed, not play clever head games. If you have something to say, just say it. I'm too busy to play your silly exercises. Otherwise, find a more productive use of your and my time. As judge and jury and former reader, I find you in Contempt. Case dismissed. Goodbye!"

Someone wrote that and emailed it to me. It's not a name I recognize, just an email address that's a stray collection of numbers and letters.  

I laughed out loud at "I wish to stay informed, not play clever head games." People read this blog to "stay informed"? That seems ill-informed. And as for that "judge and jury" and "Contempt/Case dismissed" business — that can't be a lawyer. Must just be someone cranked up about my being a (former) law professor and thinking I'm vulnerable to criticisms containing legalistic lingo. 

But you need a specific charge if you want to find me guilty, and what is it? Failure to keep you informed?  Not having something to say and just saying it? The crime of playing clever head games? The infliction of silly exercises? Cryptic expression?

Oh, there I go, asking questions when I don't allow comments. Oddly enough, the complaint you see above never mentions the abolition of comments. Is it possible the person thinks the blog "has become a waste of time" because there are no comments anymore — that the comments used to help him understand what I was cryptically expressing? Ha ha — I can't understand what the emailer is cryptically expressing. And now here I am imposing it on you!

FROM THE EMAIL: Mary writes: 

Um, that sounds like Trump! lol, too funny. With the exception of all caps, that could be a Trump twitter rant. And he’s a man that’s been more than knee deep in court cases his whole life so it kinda fits him. “waste of time”, that’s straight up Trump! What do you think?

Yeah, complete with the stray capitalization.

btw, your blog is 1000% better now, so much more interesting with curated comments.

Thanks!

And AZ Bob writes: 

I've always liked your blogging style. It reminds me of being in law school many years ago. You frame the topic in a way that provokes a wide-open discussion. The comments provide much entertainment, if not insight. This may not be what the commenter was trying to say but I do miss reading the comments. The comments had a way of making the post complete.

A while back, you asked us to be more judicious in our posts. I wish that had happened. It noticed prior to your change in format that one particular open thread became a slug fest. As moderator, you have your hands full so I see why you reigned in the comments. I hope you find a way to return to having comments.

Asking for something would not work, because there were some bad faith commenters — commenters who were out to destroy the blog. They might even be inspired to do more of the very thing I said not to do. 

AND: Bob writes:

Neither you nor any of your audience will miss this Low-Information Reader.

Tommy writes: 

I actually prefer no comments, mostly because I'm more interested in your opinion than I am anything going on there. I think having comments resulted in your being more interested in starting a conversation and less likely to give an opinion, and it's that opinion I prefer to read.

I think you actually like and prefer the conversation bit when it's civil, and history shows I'll read your blog no matter what you do, but I wanted to let you know there is at least one person that would prefer the no conversation just tell us what you think version.

Comments (and the current version of sort of comments) have been around for awhile now, and I still miss the other style, anyone that wants to comment can start their own blog.

Long time reader from back when George W. Bush was in the White House

Thanks, Tommy!

Stephen writes: 

My wife and I both miss the comments. We enjoyed reading them to each other. Quite a few of the commenters had clever and pertinent things to say. Yes, sometimes I learn things about current events from your blog; there have been multiple incidences of you writing about a death of some prominent person before I see their obituary anywhere else. Your legal commentary is also quite good. Of course, your posts can’t all be gold nuggets and diamonds; there have been many posts where your stream of consciousness writing made me think that you were talking to yourself and we were all eavesdropping. Those posts always seem to leave me cold and cause me to move on to something else.

Thanks. That's a clear indication to me that I'm not the writer for you. I'm not here to feed news updates. If you dislike the posts that are in my personal voice, then you're not the reader for me.

We still read your blog...

Oh... all right....

... but losing the comments have made it less enjoyable for my wife and I. Oh, well. I’m indifferent regarding posting any part of this on your blog. Further, I’m not going to sit down and compose an email to you whenever I feel I have something worthy to say. There was an immediacy to commenting which made it fun, and it was easy to say something. Emails not so much....

This is good.  People are more selective in what they will email compared to what they'll just drop in the comments. People — some people — would throw in comments without thinking about whether they "have something worthy to say." Nobody emails to say "Why are you still reading the New York Times?" or to ask, off topic, "Who shot Ashli Babbitt?"

ALSO: Amadeus 48 writes: 

Mixed feelings, here. I miss the comments, but if I am honest, I confess that things had fallen into a slough. In my own case, for the most part my comments gave me a chance to snark. There are other blogs for that, aren’t there?

So now I have a chance (not really given a choice) to write something at least somewhat thoughtful THAT ALTHOUSE WILL READ! Be still, my heart.

Isn’t asking an intelligent question the best way to make a point? Haven’t generations of philosophers and law professors thought so? It seemed to me that questions like for whom did Althouse vote and why were pointless. The point was to make the reader ask himself or herself for whom were they voting and why.

So, on to a brighter and more thoughtful tomorrow.

Thanks for years of fun and provocation.

"Men are exposing their legs in public as a reaction to our public behaviour being so tightly policed in public for the last year. They want to feel the wind’s tactile caress on their skin."

Said Prof Andrew Groves, the director of the Westminster Menswear Archive at the University of Westminster, quoted in "Micro shorts for men: how short is too short?/With lockdown easing, will you be following Paul Mescal and Harry Styles and baring more leg than usual this summer?" (The Guardian). 

This isn't just another men-in-shorts article. This is the news that men are going back to the kind of short shorts runners wore in the 1970s. 

And it's a Gen Z thing. So says Shane C Kurup, a Men’s Health’s editor: “They are the most socially aware, health-conscious generation we’ve ever seen. There’s a strong emphasis among this generation of being comfortable in your own skin and not blindly conforming to a prescribed body type.” 

Great! I'm looking forward to a clown show of atrocious fashion. And I intend to enjoy the fun of the Z kids annoying the millennials. 

FROM THE EMAIL: Amadeus 48 writes:

Your short note on shorts impelled me to dig up the following quote from George Orwell’s “Road to Wigan Pier.” Orwell got so many things right he seems like a prophet:

“One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England. One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth [a new model town favoured by progressive intellectuals] when the bus stopped and two dreadful-looking old men got onto it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had long gray hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus. The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at them, and back again at me, and murmured, ‘Socialists’, as one should say, ‘Red Indians’.”

So, the kiddies of Gen Z may find that their ideas have consequences.

"As the only Asian American woman on the academic faculty, I can’t imagine any other faculty member would be treated with this kind of disrespect and utter lack of due process."

Writes Yale Law School professor Amy Chua.

Some of you may have seen the YDN hit job on me, full of false allegations. I did not violate any agreement, nor have I been hosting wild parties during COVID. On the contrary, what I HAVE done is comforted a small handful of students who reached out to me in moments of crisis... pic.twitter.com/9tOoOu9p6G

— Amy Chua (@amychua) April 8, 2021

Megyn Kelly reacts:

Now they’re trying to cancel @amychua for absolutely nothing. Make no mistake: this is retribution for her support of Bret Kavanaugh, & it is disgusting. If @YaleLawSch has any backbone, it will stand up for one of its most beloved teachers & tell the damn whiners to sit down. https://t.co/2vwLGWmI9w

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) April 8, 2021

At Lawyers, Guns, and Money, lawprof Paul Campos goes on the attack in a blog post that begins "Rules are for the little people, chapter infinity":

Meanwhile Chua and [her husband lawprof Jed] Rubenfeld continue to get paid collectively close to a million bucks a year to basically not do their jobs any more, but apparently being asked to at least avoid getting drunk around the kiddies is just too much to ask of our best and brightest.

I can't possibly know exactly what the facts are. I've read Chua's letter, and I don't think the law school has put out its version of the facts. As a law school professor, I was never someone who invited students to my home, so I tend to admire the lawprofs who do extend this kind of sociability to their students. I would find it very difficult to do, and I assume that, generally, students would love this kind of festivity. 

But I could imagine professors inviting students into their home for the wrong reasons. There could be the Harvey Weinstein of law professors. I visualize a continuum of motives for professorly parties, from unselfishly magnanimous to utterly monstrous. But where's the line on the continuum where the professor should know this isn't right and the law school should intervene and say no more parties for you? Why did Yale intervene? I think it intervened and entered into some sort of no-parties agreement with Chua and Rudenfeld, and now, it seems, the question is whether the agreement has been violated. That's the basic factual question here. I'm not looking at the agreement, but Chua does seem to say that she has continued to have students over to her house. 

In her letter (embedded in the tweet, above), Chua justifies what she did based on anti-Asian violence and racism. She's the Asian-American female law professor, and students in her diversity category need support, so... there's an implied exception to the agreement? Or... interpret the agreement properly, and there's no violation? I'd have to see the agreement and know what, exactly, she did. 

Does the agreement refer to "parties" and define parties? Is the law school dean following the students' interpretation of the agreement? Do the students even have the text of the agreement?

IN THE EMAIL: Tank writes:

Like you, I have no idea what actually happened or whether Chua is in the right. However, her use of the Asian Card immediately puts me off because it likely has no relation to the controversy, but is being used to shut people up.

I'd like to know more about all the "cards" that are getting played. What race(s) are the students who are complaining about her? Do the complaints have a racial element? Has the faculty relied on Chua to tend to the needs of Asian-American students? Does the school hold itself out as a paragon of diversity goodness because it has Chua, among others, on its faculty? There's a whole complicated context here, and Chua is fighting — frantically, or so it seems. 

ALSO IN THE EMAIL: Heartless Aztec writes:

As a retired teacher who pulled numerous semesters at the local community college 40+ years ago let me say what a grand idea it was then to have or go to the occasional parties where students and other faculty members were invited. We were all young and it was a very different time - a very different world. By 2015 when I retired that world had changed and there was no way that any students would ever be in my home for any reason or that I would ever attend a party where they were invited in any capacity other than officially school sanctioned. 20 year old students were for the most part immature children in 2015 and fledgling adults in 1980.

AND: Amadeus 48 emails: 

If we take Amy Chua’s letter at face value, she doesn’t know what she did “ wrong,” because no one has told her. Why would a law school take a bow towards due process by informing of the accusations? Her description of the zoom call is incomplete. Why did she enter into any agreement? Isn’t all this fallout from her friendship with Brett Kavanaugh? Didn’t some students make accusations against her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, based on wrongspeak? Wasn’t she accused of coaching female interview candidates to glam it up a bit for Judge Kavanaugh? Read the article in The Guardian about that one. Not a single source named. I suspect that there are factions at Yale Law School-- students, administrators, and faculty--who are out to get Ms. Chua and her husband. But I am sure there is more to the story.