Although
the dowager did not offer it rapt attention beyond the first twenty minutes, the
B grade revenge fantasy Steel
and Lace has a few interesting twists to its credit beyond the standard
autonomic predator motif. It offers a sympathetic backstory for Claire Wren as
the victim overwhelmed by the collusion of masculine privilege, and combines a
procedural pursuit against its marginal futurist construct, then ends on the
same tragic note as it opened, perhaps to convey that vigilantism leads us to
the same empty, mind-numbing place, even if Bruce Davison, with his more
subdued command of telegenic capture than Ed Begley Jr, who he resembles, had a
take which may have opened the door for his casting into his X-Men role. This is not to applaud the movie for its cartoonish aspects. Michael Cerveris and his cohorts, although it implied otherwise, do not deserve their horrific deaths at the hands of yet another play on black widow mating aspects due to a stigmatizing sexual violation. This is what the Colorado baker's refusal to service a a gay couple, and Wilkinson's request for Sanders to leave the Red Hen amount to, the application of stigma, and our tolerances to be put on the spot. I agree that Sarah Wilkinson had the right to refuse Sanders service, but her rationale for doing so is tenuous at best. Press Secretaries do not make White House policy, they explain or justify to the press corp, regardless of ideological stripes, and I was angry about the fiasco for this reason. The woman is a federal office holder, and yet the discomfort of bus boys and waiters is of a sudden preeminent because this particular president is trying to ease pressure on our southern border with a more exposed, authoritarian gesture. Freedom of mobility is important, and if the indigenous peoples conquered by colonialism want to destroy the best aspects of Western civilization, maybe now well past its zenith, they may be victorious against imperial sins out of moral guilt latticed into egalitarian fictions, but any number of people may still die needlessly, if developing world standards are a new found metric.
It takes our now embattled , but still robust meritocracy, as embodied in Georgetown's Randy Barnett, that we haven't quite revamped the legal dueling as a method to settle the argument between federalism and the masses. As Trump has ratcheted up his peevishness, I have toned down my excoriating expletives, mostly due to the extraordinary exertions of bowel maintenance, but I haven't retreated. If Maga and the left wants a blood feud, bring it on. My life is as gestapo hardened as Allison's real life will to survive against such savagery against her body. Proportionality may fail us even in the most heartfelt circumstances, but we always have new medians. The age of the savant has caught on.
