DownWithTyranny!: We could talk about the Supreme Court and health care. Nah, instead let's talk about sex -- at least sex Village-style. Plus: Al Ross (1911-2012)

A New Yorker sendoff for cartoonist Al Ross

"Winning is crucial to my retirement plans."

In his newsletter-blogpost tribute, New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff offers this cartoon and two more (one reproduced below) to back up his claim: "[W]hile Al is the record holder for age among New Yorker cartoonists, it’s not his longevity we admire so much as the spontaneity of his art, achieved by drawing directly in ink with no preliminary sketching in pencil." See below for more.

AND NOW, BACK TO SEX . . .

"[Governor Palin] was a total charmer, very friendly. The few things she said were intelligent."

-- former Sen. Arlen Specter (without citing any of the "intelligent"
things she said), quoted in Al Kamen's WaPo "In the Loop" column

by Ken

I had it in mind to write about today's final round of Supreme Court health-care oral hearings. After all, from those hearings -- or rather from the attitudes displayed by the soon-to-be-majority deciders of the Roberts Court 5 (the traditional Crackpot 4 plus frequent ally "Slow Anthony" Kennedy, who seems squarely in lockstep with the CP4 -- it should be possible to foresee at least in outline the immediate future of federal health care law, since today's subject was what happens to the rest of the so-called Affordable Care Act (ACA) ~~when~~ if the individual mandate is struck down, as we learned from yesterday's jesting and japing by the RC5 (with Slow Anthony emphatically onboard with the CP4) it will be.

Naturally the actual merits and demerits -- constitutional, legal, and health-care-delivery-wise -- will hardly figure in the outcome. Which is perhaps fitting, considering that the ACA was intended to do hardly anything for actual affordable health care, and its opponents have shown no interest whatsoever in it. For the reasons Howie outlined yesterday, I'm certainly not here to defend the dreadful ACA. At the same time, there's something special about knowing that to the extent that the ACA is dismantled, it will be done by the wrong people for the wrong reasons with likely disastrously wrong results. And any congressional "fixes" in the foreseeable future are likely to be down the line wronger still.

SO INSTEAD, LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX

Okay, not sex exactly. More like Sex in the Village. And not so much actual sex, which as practiced among the Village privileged seems to be unimaginably tiresome and yet lurid.

Va-va-voom! We have new insight into what may have been going on in the mind of then-Sen. Arlen Specter, seen here on Princess Sarah's left. (Sorry, I don't know who the old coot on the princess's right is. Perhaps a homeless crank who wandered onto the platform unmolested by normally crackerjack Republican security? For what it's worth, to the extent that his clearly limited faculties permit he seems to be enjoying the little "clapping game" they're playing.)

I'm thinking that Village Sex exists in three dimensions: (1) what Villagers claim to believe; (2) what they actually believe; and (3) what they actually do.

I don't think we dare venture into the miasma of (3), which in any case is likely to prove as tedious as it is disgusting. And goodness knows we're all sick of hearing (1). Which leaves (2), what Villagers actually believe about sex, into which we get occasional moments of insight like this one drawn from Al Kamen's Washington Post "In the Loop" column. (WARNING: Although there's no actual sex in the following report, the nausea-inducing quotient may be dangerous for the queasy of stomach.)

Take a knee, senator

Former senator Arlen Specter’s new memoir, “Life Among the Cannibals,” recounts his party switch and his votes for President Obama’s stimulus package and the health-care plan.

But it’s not just about politics.

For example, in one steamy passage on Page 156, he recalls riding on the campaign bus of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008 with then-Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

"She was a total charmer, very friendly,” Specter writes. “The few things she said were intelligent." He doesn’t mention what they were, maybe because he was distracted.

"We were sitting virtually knee to knee in the cramped bus," he writes. "She radiated sensuality. Her skirt rode above her knees -- not exactly short, but close."

The excitement builds . . .

(The "excitement" referred to here would correspond to the "nausea-inducing quotient" I alluded to above.)

By the way, I have intentionally not included a link for Senator Specter's book. If you really want it, I expect you can find it easily enough on your own.

A NEW YORKER SENDOFF FOR AL ROSS (1911-2012)

"Here is the way it works: We take from the rich and give
to the poor -- keeping only enough for salaries, travel,
equipment, depreciation, and so on, and so on."

This is the second cartoon cited by Bob Mankoff in his newsletter-blogpost remembrance of Al Ross (there's one more onsite) as evidence of "the spontaneity of his art, achieved by drawing directly in ink with no preliminary sketching in pencil."

Bob's post has pictures from Al's 100th-birthday party, about which he writes: "I'm sure there was a lot of nostalgia at that party, but probably not too much from Al, who was always more interested in what he was going to do tomorrow than in what he did yesterday. We published this cartoon of his in 2000, when Al was nine-tenths of the way through his century, just as a new one was beginning."