The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

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How Long Would the Gulf Oil Spill Power the USA?

The amount of oil spilling into the Gulf Coast boggles the mind. And looking at one offshore well destroying such a huge swath of fragile ecologies, it's easy to think, "Man, there's more oil down there than I thought. I see what those 'drill, baby, drill types' were talking about."

But here's my question: how much oil is that compared to America's energy needs? If all of that oil had gone into refineries instead of into the Gulf and our wetlands, how long would it keep our cars and lights and internet servers going?

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The Kagan Dog Whistle Gets Louder

Today, Ann Gerhart at the Washington Post came right out and said it: Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court is suspect because she is not a mother. So that dog whistle I was complaining about? It's a steam whistle now, very audible and very shrill.

I'm not going to link to the Gerhart's post, because bad behavior should not be rewarded with traffic. If you want to find it on the WaPo opinions page, her title is "The Supreme Court Needs More Mothers." No, I am not making that up.

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The Kagan Dog Whistle

Suddenly, with the Elena Kagan nomination, careerism is a terrible thing.

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Elena Kagan Straight; Men Lousy in Bed

Friends of Elena Kagan grudgingly admitted on Wednesday that the Supreme Court nominee was unmarried not because of her orientation but because American men are absolutely terrible in bed.

"Maybe we shouldn't have said anything," said an embarrassed law-school classmate of the 50-year-old Solicitor General. "We didn't want for the men Elena's dated to feel inadequate simply because they are."

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The Republicans Aren't Tough Enough

One day in high school, I casually infuriated one of the other boys. (We were all boys, and therefore the place was so full of adolescent macho boneheads that I didn't even notice I was one of them.) He had made a physically aggressive gesture toward me in the parking lot, and rather than simply ignoring him, as a mature person would have, I had responded with a calculated show of disregard, making it insultingly plain that I didn't take his threats, or him, seriously.

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Not the Real Shakespeare

Flavia has a post that makes me laugh. She recently went to see a Shakespeare comedy produced by a regional theater company, who staged it in modern dress, worked to keep the piece "accessible and appealing," and used some good, old-fashioned slapstick. In short, the production was straight out of the standard Shakespearean-performance playbook: faithful to the text but using costumes and set as an interpretive gloss.

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The Ivy League/Wall Street Connection

Ezra Klein recently tried to answer the question "Why is Goldman Sachs full of Ivy Leaguers?" by interviewing a Harvard/Goldman alum. (h/t to a righteously repulsed DougJ).

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There Are No Republican Moderates in the Senate

The Senate Republicans folded on their filibuster today. This morning The Hill ran an article with this headline:

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The One-Two Punch of Wall Street Reform

Some conservatives have accused President Obama of timing the Goldman Sachs lawsuit to make it easier to pass Wall Street Reform. It's not true, but the conservatives' anger at the alleged tactic is a sign of what a good idea that tactic is. It's the right general thing to do, and Obama should do a lot more of it.

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The Arizona "Immigration" Law

Let's be clear about one thing: the Arizona immigration law signed by Governor Janice Brewer this week is not about illegal immigrants. It is about arresting legal immigrants and about American citizens. Because it makes not having your documents on you a crime.

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https://jamesjmarino.wordpress.com/
Biography

Doctor Cleveland is a transparent pseudonym for Shakespeare scholar Jim Marino, who blogs about politics, education, literature, and the arts. His personal obsessions include live theater, Red Sox baseball, and powerful black coffee. He teaches college, somewhere along America's glorious North Coast. He has also been known to write about Shakespeare and early modern theater.

While he blogs about the general academic life, he does not discuss his current institution, its students, or its employees on the blog. Nor does he use any university resources to blog. Opinions expressed on the blog are not those of his employer, and do not reflect the content of his classes.

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