The Antecedents of Nolle Prosequi in Semi-Darkness

"nothing to see here"-- Randy Barnett, former sardonic prosecutor

One of the dowager’s waylaid theses, due to the continuing calamity of age and equipment breakage, was an examination of Jodie Foster, primarily due to her chameleon on screen swivels; her mature performances represent a chink in the armor of homosexual lifestyles as a statement of defiance. A critic need not necessarily have all of Miss Foster’s biographical details present and accounted for to actualize her thematic interest in women who provoke strong reactions, female characters violently thrust out of the mainstream, or willing to utilize violence to restore her place as a productive member of society. On occasion, these characters are guided or misguided through the process of discovery and revelation. In The Accused (1988), the mission statement film of its time, the resistance to Foster as Tobias, and the subsequent conversion to her cause, pivots on Kelly McGillis as the initially pragmatic DA Kathryn Murphy, whose methodology can be compared to the controversial State Attorney for Cook County, Kim Foxx. We might also interject here a contra-indicator to Nick Gillespie’s assertion that libertarians “suspends judgment” because in this particular Reason headline Robby Soave is being a scold in relation to the conduct of the SA. It brings to mind the rapid fall from grace of a real Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, whose white privilege was so conspicuous in the gradations of American liberalism that she is now a pariah in a Montgomery County prison, a betrayer of the public trust.

Foster revisits some of the motifs from her other films in The Brave One (2006), a mid-life dramatic failure for the darling of Martin Scorsese, but this overwrought revenge fantasy introduced Terrence Howard as a possible figure of reconciliation in his guise as Mercer, which I’ve mentioned before, in my burrowed archives of buckling strength. He subsequently garnered attention, as a short lived prosecutor for the now satirized Law & Order expansions on the basis of geography, the producer in Crash, a meridian character at best, the bifurcated mogul in Amazon’s despairing Electric Dreams. If my viewers believe my next move is to convey that Howard gives me license to enter into the Empire saga, now leeched into Chicago’s gritty underside, they would be wrong. I have been silent on the Smollett scandal, despite recent research, because nearly all players involved come out of this with the faint odor of garbage attached to them, not that hoaxes can't expose a greater hypocrisy, but all Jussie seems to have done here is snap his own spine, and then gave Foxx leeway to sabotage whatever her aspirations amounted to, in the face of such blatant favoritism. These aren't as grave as the charge and convictions thereof leveled at Kane, but there is still a degree of paternalism involved. Progressives tend to be apologists for black women, even if they fail ethical standards long accepted for the patrician class. If there is any light at the end of the tunnel here, conservatives on Twitter deserve credit for smelling a red herring early on in January's polar temperatures.