Gotham Diary:
Spring
2 April 2012
Where was the sun this weekend, when we might have enjoyed it more? Well, here it is, this fine Monday morning, as if to mock us.
Blasting has been announced, to begin this week. Something to look forward to. Ray Soleil was recollecting what it was like to be in a chandelier showroom when the LIRR-Grand Central tube was under construction: a lot of tinkling. I note that that connecting tunnel is not yet in use. I wonder if I will live to use the Second Avenue subway. Seriously, I do. 2017 is a ways off.
Here’s the amusing part of the blasting: all surface transportation is blocked for the duration of each the eight daily blasts. The blasts are expected to last for only a minute, but a lot of people, not to mention cars, accumulate at our busy intersection in that time. I expect that tenants will be unable to leave our building during these exciting moments. Or we’ll be stranded outside Fairway, laden with groceries. It’s all very jolly — great summer fun.
Ray, with his great sense of humor, assures me that the MTA will run out of money before the new line is completed, “just like the last time.”
A lot of good the sunny weather is doing today! Welcome to spring!
***
Ah, here’s something good. Bill Keller has his doubts about hate crimes. So do I, especially after reading The Righteous Mind. It would be interesting to see Jonathan Haidt’s analysis of the inspiration behind hate-crime legislation. The biggest nugget of wisdom that I draw from his book is that the moral foundations of liberalism are skimpier than those of conservatism, and that three of the conservative foundations, which he labels Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity, are actually repugnant to many liberals, especially the WEIRD ones (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic). Hate-crime legislation might be said to punish the expression of conservative morality in any criminal context, while at the same time mounting a corrective reflection, asserting that liberals have positive ideas of their own about Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity. It is difficult for me to see hate-crime legislation as anything but unseemly spite.
In any case, I hope that Keller’s sentiment about the Tyler Clementi case — “It’s not a great reach to say that Ravi faces up to 10 years in prison for being a jerk.” — finds its way into plenty of amicus briefs filed in support of Dharun Ravi.
Keller’s Op-Ed piece is part of the Times‘s triple-headed appraisal of the Trayvon Martin case; the only thing missing from the two-page report and the two opinion pieces (David Carr writes the other) is how this story about a fatal nighttime scuffle between two strangers in Florida came to merit coverage by the nation’s newspaper of record. At some point, I hope, the Times will print a little time-line tracing the development of the story on the Internet, capturing key moments at Twitter, such as Spike Jones’s notorious (and utterly inexcusable) posting what he thought was George Zimmerman’s home address. How did Spike Jones know about what happened to a teenager in Florida? What I’d really like to see, of course, is a payoff in the form of repealing the Stand Your Ground legislation that has made it impossible for the police to arrest George Zimmerman. Permissive gun laws correspond, as spiteful overreach, to hate-crime laws. The United States desperately needs a conservative rebuttal, based solidly on appeals to loyalty, authority, and sanctity, to the National Rifle Association. The Righteous Mind makes it clear (not that it wasn’t already pretty clear) that no amount of liberal squawking is ever going to advance the cause of gun control.