Alcohol and the law.

 Should a sign like this come with your card of admission to the bar?

According to an item I received as part of a list serve I'm on for Texas lawyers (no, I'm not in Texas, long story), a frightening number of lawyers are alcoholics.  The Texas Lawyer reports:

But now, for the first time in decades, a team of researchers has verified and quantified the problem in a newly published study that shows that 21 percent of attorneys qualify as problem drinkers, 28 percent struggle with depression and 19 percent have anxiety.

Wow, that's a really high percentage.  I wouldn't have guessed it was anywhere near that amount.  I frankly doubted that but when I went to post this item, I found this one from a couple of years ago:

Studies conducted in numerous jurisdictions have pegged the rate of alcoholism in the legal profession at between 15% and 24%. Roughly 1 in 5 lawyers is addicted to alcohol. Of course, the converse is true,namely that the majority have no problem in consuming alcohol.

Hmm, the converse there isn't very comforting. 

Indeed, given the way statistics work, if 15% to 24% of lawyers are alcoholics, there must be a certain percentage above that who have some sort of problem with alcohol, assuming that a person can have a problem with alcohol and not be an alcoholic.  That does bring up the oddity that what constitutes being an alcoholic is, oddly, not universally defined.  You would think it would be, but it isn't.  Daily drinking doesn't equate with being an alcoholic, contrary to what some teetotalers feel, although in recent years some former drinking cultures have sort of headed that way, oddly enough.  Generally a male can drink up to two "drinks" per day and be regarded as a moderate drinking, but above that puts you in some other category. The amount is less for women.  Having said that, if addiction is considered, that's a different equation I guess (I"m not an expert on this, rather obviously).

Indeed, it's been interesting to note that columnist Froma Harrop has been sort of at war with the trend in some quarters in pretty strongly advocating her view that a drink a day or two for men isn't something that people ought to be up in arms about. That takes some guts on her part, as generally even people who drink a couple of drinks per day are going to be reluctant, in this environment, to admit it.  Harrop went one step further the other day and wrote a column arguing that 18 year olds should be allowed to drink, on the logical basis that if you are old enough to serve in the military, and to vote, you should be old enough to drink.  That's not going to happen here in the US, however, if for no other reason that this is one of those areas where an old Puritan ethic survives, even tough the Puritans were not teetotalers.

So, getting back on point, if 15% to 24%, or in the other calculation 21%, of lawyers are alcoholics, it must also mean that at least a few more percent are somewhere on the scale of maybe having a problem or verging on one.  And there'd be a few who must have problems with other substances, although a lot of those would be individuals who also have a problem with alcohol.  Having said that, about a year or more ago I worked on a matter where one lawyer frankly told me about another former lawyer in his firm that that the guy had a problem with marijuana, which is fully illegal here.  Of course, there was a lot of bad blood going on there, so I don't have a clue if that was really true.  I know that our bar is pretty darned aggressive about addressing lawyer misconduct, so I wonder.

Indeed, the ABA, in one of the periodic emails it sends out, reports from some ABA convention that:

On Wednesday, Hazelden and the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs released the study that showed 21 percent of licensed, employed attorneys qualify as problem drinkers, 28 percent struggle with some level of depression and 19 percent demonstrate symptoms of anxiety. It found that younger attorneys in the first 10 years of practice exhibit the highest incidence of these problems. The findings were posted online this week in the Journal of Addiction Medicine, with the print edition available in mid-February.

So it was at 21%, but went on to note:

When focusing on three of the 10 questions that measured only volume and frequency of drinking, the authors arrived at the conclusion that more than 1 in 3 practicing attorneys are problem drinkers even though the attorneys themselves might not characterize themselves as that.

So that would be 33%.  That's a stunning figure.

 Old Parr.  Apparently this Scotch whiskey was named after the oldest man in England, and is still distilled, although its no longer sold in the UK but only in export markets.  I don't know much about Parr, other than that he lived on a spartan diet, but which included a small drink of something each day, and lived to a reputed 152 years old, which is way old, if true.  Ironically, his death was precipitated by rich eating when he became famous in his advanced old age.

Anyhow, if this many lawyers have a problem, a person would still have to ask why this is the case.  One Blawg, Above the Law commented on it as follows:

Earlier this week, a tipster sent us a link to a Greedy Associates post entitled “Why Do Lawyers Drink So Much?” My initial thought was “Ugh.” Honestly, somebody writes that article every three months, and every six months we have to write another version of the same story.

The reasons given for lawyer alcoholism are always the same. “Lawyers are only alcoholic because they’re super TYPE A badasses.” “Lawyers hate their jobs and drink to forget.” “It’s not the law that makes people alcoholics, it’s alcoholics who choose the law!”

I was going to ignore this latest Drunks and the Law story, but then the scotch in my coffee kicked in and I thought, “Hey, isn’t it just that lawyers drink because they can?”

Think about it: being a lawyer is a great job to have if you want to drink as much as possible while also having a job…

Here’s my premise: being a “functional alcoholic” is the best kind of function and the best kind of alcoholic. Functional alcoholics get to do fun things like hang out with their friends, get hammered and hook-up with random people, then claim they “don’t remember” it in the morning. But they also get to hold onto their jobs, have relationships, and, of course, they don’t have to go to meetings.

Well, presumably this was written with tongue in cheek. Having said that, now I really wonder how many lawyers are functioning alcoholics?  I frankly am still stunned that the figure for the percentage who are alcoholics is up over 20%.    I don't see a lot of lawyers boozing it up, so if people are, they're doing it, I guess, in the privacy of their own homes or something.

Still, what's that say about the law and lawyers?  Whatever it is, it isn't good.

I recently sat in a computer CLE put on by the ABA regarding Introverts in the Law.  I'm fairly introverted myself, so I thought it might be interesting to hear what the had to say.  One thing I did think was really interesting is that, contrary to what people suppose, Introverts aren't necessarily shy nor non gregarious.  They can and do interact with people, it's just that they need down time and they sort of retreat into themselves at some point.  Often, the people speaking claimed, others are surprised to find out that somebody else is an introvert.  I'll be that's really true.  That's probably also why the families of introverted lawyers, supposedly up over 60% of the profession, are probably routinely frustrated with the spouses, who are busy and being engaged and engaging all day, only to come home and say "no. . . I don't want to go to a Super Bowl party. . . can't you watch it here while I work on the car?"

That's a sudden shift in this conversation, but I think the Above the Law item on "Type A" personalities is wrong, as I suspect a lot of lawyers aren't Type A, whatever Type A is, but something a lot more complex.  And I'm wondering if the severely introverted, and those folks do exist, are shutting their minds down that way.  Very bad, if true.

What that suggests is a couple of things, I suppose.  For one thing, if a person isn't they type of person who can be around others for at least 8 to 10 hours a day, and is so introverted that they hate to call that witness or opposing lawyer, maybe you ought to think twice about this as a career.  And it would seem very clear to me if you have a problem with alcohol before you are ready to take the bar, you better avoid this career as you may be setting yourself up.  And I guess I now know why so many state bars have a substance abuse program, which was a bit of a mystery to me before.

I still wonder, however.  21%?  That seems awfully high.

 Are a lot of lawyers hitting the bottle? Seems so.  Is ten years old a long time for Scotch?  I have no idea, as Scotch tastes like paint thinner and I can't imagine why anyone drinks it.

Limiting Supreme Court terms

An interesting proposal is being floated to limit Supreme Court terms to 18  years, with those terms being staggered so that one comes up every two years.

As much as I feel that thirty year veteran Justice, the late Antonin Scalia, was a great justice, this is a good idea.  I wish it would get some traction, even though I know that it is unlikely to.

The fact of the matter is that any one U.S. Supreme Court justice has an inordinate amount of power and, by extension, it causes the dead hand of the President who nominated them to live on well after it should not.  Scalia was nominated by the late President Reagan.  Long serving and highly infirm Justice Douglas, served for forty years and had been appointed by Franklin Roosevelt, only to go out under Gerald Ford.  

I'd also modify the proposal, were it me, to require a retirement age of age 70.  I know that's an unpopular idea and it would mean that no justice over age 52 could be appointed, but so be it.  Douglas is a good example of what can happen when very old justices continue to serve, but he's not the only one.  The current system simply requires too much gambling.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Buffalo Wyoming

Churches of the West: St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Buffalo Wyoming:

This is St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Buffalo Wyoming. It was built in 1889. Oddly enough, it's one of two St. Luke's in Buffalo, the other being a Lutheran Church across town.

Horses in mines

Amazing photographs of horses in mines.

Friday Farming: Farmer John Boyd Jr. Wants African-Americans To Reconnect With Farming

 African American farmers in Texas, April 1939.  Note the horse hames.

This is a really interesting short interview that touches on one of the lost demographic stories of the US since the end of World War Two:

Farmer John Boyd Jr. Wants African-Americans To Reconnect With Farming

Up until mid 20th Century a huge percentage of African Americans worked on the land.  Quite a few worked on land they didn't own, and no doubt that's why they have declined in that role to the present day.  Heavily concentrated in the American South, during World War One and then again during World War Two African Americans from the South started migrating up into Eastern and Midwestern cities.  When Robert Johnson wrote about wanting to go to "my sweet home Chicago" in 1936, he was expressing an aspiration that more than a few Southern blacks had at the time.

The great migration really wrecked that in a way that it didn't for other demographics.  There are still black farmers, but not like their once was. Given that a lot of black farmers farmed on sharecropping operations that's not too surprising, but it is a huge change in the farming demographic that should be lamented.

The African American legacy on the land shouldn't be forgotten, nor should it be lost.  Would that it could be somewhat restored, although with land prices being what they are that would be quite a chore in this economy.

Lex Anteinternet: And the Economic news gets starker.

I haven't run one of these grim items on the local economy for a month now, with this being the last one:

Lex Anteinternet: And the Economic news gets starker.:

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteintern...: And now the price of oil is down to. . . $29.00 bbl.

Wyoming sweet crude is down to about $19.00 bbl.  Wyoming sour crude is
now down to about $9.00 bbl.  It was at $76.00 bbl in June 2014.

Fairly clearly, those are not economically sustainable prices.

There were several intervening bad stories in the meantime, but given at there's been so many, you reach a "what's the point" type of location.

This past week, however, prices went up, in spite of the news that Iran was about to place 4 bbl/day on line.  Some of the OPEC countries and Russia were beginning to get in line, and there was a day when there was a sharp escalation of the price.  Of course, sharp in this context doesn't put the price up around $50/bbl where it seems to need to be, but it was hovering around $40/bbl.

Yesterday, however, it was sinking again.

Today we read in the paper that Ultra has hired Kirkland & Ellis, the bankruptcy firm that shows up in all of these bankruptcies and which we recently read that Chesapeake was consulting with (although they say they aren't taking bankruptcy).  And Cloud Peak (coal, but still in good shape) and Marathon (which downsized earlier) posted losses for the last quarter.

When the price started to climb a bit I thought that perhaps it had sunk to the pint where the low prices were no longer sustainable.  I could have been premature on that.

Lawyers and the Challenges of the Electronic Age

Recently I was reading a commentary by a young lawyer that was on working conditions. The commentary was not on technology, but it raised a really important point that is often missed, and indeed that relates directly to work environment.  As this blog tracks changes on an historical basis, and this is a pretty big one, it's well worth looking at.  That is, how has computerization and the Internet, both of which we've explored here at great length in the terms of the law, impacted work expectations vs. reality.  It's a bit disturbing in some ways.

 Lawyer, in this case an African American lawyer, the way it was.  Now this scene would be very rare, in a suit and tie, he's going through the books, the way that thousands of lawyers once did.  Now it'd be rare to find a lawyer dressed like this, and in a law library.

First of all, let's look back a bit.  Unfortunately, in doing this, I have to jump around a bit, so bear with me.

Law firms have been around as long as lawyers, that's no surprise. But the nature and position of lawyers within firms is quite a bit different now as compared to earlier eras.  If we go far enough back, let's say into the late 1700s, we'd find that most lawyers worked as general solos or in firms of just a few men.  There was no "Big Law", that category of firm so beloved by the ABA and whose fates sends the ABA into fits of angst.  A lot of other things were different too, and one of them was, by and large, that young would be lawyers basically apprenticed with firms "reading the law".  There were some professors who taught law but the big law schools, or for that matter, the small law schools, didn't exist.

This type of firm basically evolved along into the 20th Century, with there of course being modifications and changes depending upon where a person was, and the big firms, those darling beloveds of the ABA, did start to appear.  But much was different about the practice at the time.

Now, all lawyers kept libraries depending upon their ability to do so. And indeed, the law library remains the stock visual element in film in depicting lawyers, in their firms, at work.  And for a real reason.  The first thing any lawyer did in his own office was to resort to his own library.  If answers couldn't be found there, he might resort to the county law library or, if there was a Federal court, the Federal Court law library.  Beyond that, and perhaps surprising in context, the value of libraries was so appreciated by lawyers that it was very common for lawyers to use the libraries of other firms.  All this was true when I was first practicing.

 Typical court law library, this one in a Federal Courthouse in Seattle.

Now, leaping back to law firms for a second, up until after World War Two, while there were very large firms in big cities, by and large most law was quite local, and this remained the case well into the 1990s.  What wasn't the case, however, was the predominance of the "billable hour" and the business model of the modern firm.  

Billable hours have actually always existed to some degree. There's a reason that Lincoln said "a lawyers time is his stock and trade".  But following World War Two, and really more into the 1960s, there were other models as well.  Most of those simply died off, and in spite of the fact that some lawyers propose other models from time to time, the billable hour is firmly entrenched and it isn't going anywhere.  Lawyers, charge by the hour.

 

 Private lawyers' club library, New York.  This club apparently had quite the reputation at one time, but I'm not sure if it is still around.  If somebody knows of The Lawyers Club in NYC, let us know.

Now, getting back to the libraries, when we consider big projects or big litigation prior to the real dominance of the Internet, what that meant is that young lawyers assigned to research projects, or for that matter more established ones who were doing the same, spent hours and hours in law libraries reading, and then reducing their research to writing.  To give a typical example, a senior lawyer on a case would assign a project or a brief to a young lawyer, who would then spend several days, perhaps even a week of eight to ten hour days researching it, and then he'd reduced that to a written product by dictating (not typing or writing) his work, based upon the copies of cases he'd made and his hand written notes.

Common office scene up until the 1990s.  Secretary (in this case blind) typing while transcribing.  You can still find a few lawyers using Dictaphones, but for the most part this process is one of the past and a lawyer's first product is rendered in print from a computer.  Quite a few lawyers my age and younger, and I'm not young (age 52) generate nearly all of their finished written product themselves.  Voice has returned and is returning, however, in the form of dictating into the computer itself.

It took a long time.

Inside of firms, this was the norm for decades. Firms became highly acclimated to it, and so did the lawyers that grew up in that environment.

And what that meant is that a young lawyer assigned to very few cases actually, simply by default, engaged in a lot of work and thereby rendered quite a return. It wasn't some sort of conspiracy, it just was.  So, to put out one substantial summary brief a single lawyer might have 60 to 80 hours of time.

Now, that's all changed.

With the computer and Internet, the law library is a thing of the past to some degree.  Most more substantial firms still  have one, but quite a few solo practitioners do not.  And they don't need them.  If they have a Westlaw or Lexus account, they have the equivalent of a massive case law, law library, at their fingertips. They also have access, if they are willing to pay more, to the treatises that used to be one of the real pluses of a bigger law library.  But case law is a big deal.

Frankly, I think the product isn't as good as it was before the computer, but the speed at which it is produced is massively increased. Given our prior example, that 60 to 80 hour work product is now reduced to 20 or so hours.  That is, the average good young lawyer can probably do in 20 hours which once took 60, in terms of research and writing.

So one good lawyer is much more efficient than ever.

But, as the business model never contemplated this, and as most of the bigger firms are dominated by lawyers who came up in another era, and as overhead has not gone down, the work hour expectation has not been reduced.

This was the point of the complaining young lawyer.  Wherever he was, he was complaining that where he worked the older lawyers had expectations based on what things were like when their careers started, and things were now different. I'd never considered that, but that's really quite true.

Added to that, however, the younger lawyer probably hasn't considered that while libraries were always expensive, a time has gone on, overhead for firms has increased in every way. So, the business model is not only based on an earlier era, to some extent (and definitely not in all firms) but it may be necessary.

Indeed, the only area this isn't true is for solo practitioners, for whom costs should be way down. With a Westlaw account their libraries are as good as most big firms, and now that there's no real need for scriveners or secretaries, the one having yielding to another, and both to some degree to the computer, in a solo's office, they ought to be more competitive than ever.

All of which makes the ongoing super sized white shoe firms a real oddity.  They do keep on keeping on, but mostly it would seem due to reputation and history.  Mid sized regional firms ought to be a lot more competitive in terms of product than the big firms the ABA has on its perpetual worry list.  True, the internet lets these firms penetrate everywhere, which is something they do use to their advantage.  But the extent to which the advantage is perceived, as opposed to real, is another factor.

Anyhow, by way of that young Internet lawyer's example, he probably has to be working on a lot more things at one time to keep up his requirements than his fellows of 30 or 40 years ago.  And that may explain why so many of the "Millennial" generation lawyers don't stay in firms long. It wouldn't be the only reason, but part of one, I suspect.

On a totally different topic, another interesting is problem has become that young staff members becoming so totally acclimated to the electronic age that they operate in the assumption that the law, in terms of materials and evidence, is in that age.  It isn't.  I've really been noticing that recently.

Many documents are produced only in the electronic form now. A disk comes in the mail, or a thumb drive, or maybe somebody just dropboxes records to another lawyer. That's all well and good, but at the broken bottle end of the law, depositions and court, paper rules.  You can't turn to an witness and say "See!  See Mr. Witness, here in an electronic form within this piece of plastic is that letter that you wrote that says. . . .".

Nope, that's happening with paper.

But that is, interestingly enough not obvious to the totally electronically acclimated.  Recently I've noticed that I have to say "print out" rather than "give me" when getting ready for a deposition, or somebody will think that giving me a thumb drive is adequate.

Indeed, I'm not  the only one, I suspect, that's experienced this, as I've been in more than one deposition recently where a lawyer will say "look at this photo on my computer".  That's a totally worthless line of questioning in a deposition.

While on the topic of electronic acclimation, I've now noticed that the cell phone checking addiction that is common with teenagers has spread to lawyers. I've been in more than one deposition recently where lawyers are continually checking texts on their cell phone or looking at it.  I'm convinced that cell phones are a truly hideous invention and won't be good for us long term, and aren't good for us now.

Finally,  I note that a debate has broken out about a recent study which concluded that if legal services were fully automated the population of lawyers were correspondingly drop 13%.

Not so say some, including the New York Times.

Perhaps the missed story is that this has already happened, and impacted the lawyer population, and lawyers incomes, already.  I've addressed this above, basically, but automation is hitting big time and exactly at that time during which there is a surplus of lawyers.  If one lawyer can do the work in 1/5th of the time, this has to have an impact.  It hasn't reduced the population of lawyers yet, but like gasoline, lawyers are a surplus product that we continue to oddly generate irrespective of a lack of demand. We could do some things about that.  We could make the bar exam tougher, but instead we're making it travel, like the UBE, arguably making the situation worse.  Or we could reduce the number of students going through the system, indeed we could probably reduce that by half and not suffer.  Or we could make a legal education tougher.  There seems to be an idea it's really tough, but that's not really true.  Given recent opinions by the US. Supreme Court, making law school tougher and inserting some serious courses on the philosophy and history of law might be a good idea.

Antonin Scalia passes on.

By the time this goes up here, this will hardly be in the category of really new "news", as it was already widely discussed and analyzed on the very day that it occurred.  The story, of course, is that Judge Antonin Scalia has died at age 79.

I've posted a lot about the Supreme Court and the fact that the system we have would create in the very near future an opening on the Court that would be of huge significance, so the analysis being done today is something I've already touched upon.  Suffice it to say, however, while no man controls the date of his passing, the passing of Justice Scalia couldn't come at a time that would have more impact.  Or, perhaps, make the impact of Presidential elections more obvious.  Some far left Liberals are frankly almost gloating about this death, which is unseemly to say the least, but his death, like his life, may have more of a Conservative impact than those gloaters may think.

First, the man. Scalia was, by all who would evaluate him objectively, a massive intellect.  In recent years Scalia stood out with his political opposite Ruth Bader Ginsberg in those regards.  Not every Justice can have that claimed and almost none can have it claimed to the extent it was true about Scalia.  It was impossible to ignore him as the force of his logic and opinion were simply too great to to do so..

Appointed by Ronald Reagan, Scalia was only older than the other surviving Reagen appointee, the disappointing Anthony Kennedy.  He was not the oldest Justice at the time of his death, that being Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  For some time I've been expecting either Ginsberg or Scalia to pass on, simply based on their appearance, which did not look good to me.  That may sound morbid, but it's realistic. Kennedy appears much healthier.  But, any way this is looked at, at the age that four, now three, of the Justices have been, death has been something that's been in the Court chambers every day.  During the next President's term, whomever that is, there will be at least one more Justice to replace in this manner, if not three.  This fact alone, evident seemingly to all, has made me wonder why Ruth Bader Ginsberg did not resign last year, thereby making it semi assured that President Obama would pick her successor rather than potentially a Republican President next term.

That gets ahead, I suppose, of the story a bit.

Scalia was born in 1936 in Trenton New Jersey.  His father was from Sicily and his mother was an American whose parents had immigrated from Italy. At the time of his birth his father, who would go on to be a professor of Romance languages, was a graduate student.  His mother was an elementary school student.  He attended a public grade school and a Jesuit high school before going on to Georgetown University and then Harvard Law School.  

As a lawyer, he only practiced for six years before moving on to a teaching position at the University of Virginia.  In 1971 he began a series of posts with the then Administration which he retained until appointed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1982.  He was appointed to the United States Supreme Court on September 17, 1986.  He was the longest sitting justice at the time of his death.

Scalia's career, quite frankly, defines much of what I have criticized about the United States Supreme Court.  He practiced in the real world very little, and was yet one of the many Ivy League graduates to be appointed to the bench. And, of course, he occupied the position for eons, leaving it only through death.  But I'll concede that Scalia's intellect argues against my position.  He was a giant.

One of the justices whose opinions were consistently well thought out and frankly brilliant, it won't be easily possible to replace him.  And his death occurs at a time when American politics have descended into an increasingly extreme stage, epitomized by a very odd Presidential race, while the Court has been consistently split between four conservatives and four liberals with Justice Kennedy in the middle.  His death means we now have a more or less liberal court with a swing vote that is problematic.  So, this court will swing between deadlocked and liberal at least until the next appointee makes it something else.  

The appointment of that Justice is of massive importance.  President Obama will nominate somebody, but of course he well knows that there is little chance that nominee shall be approved (but not no chance whatsoever).  Given that, it will be interesting to see who he chooses for a position that can probably not be obtained, at least right away.  And now, who will fill this vacated bench, will become an issue in this campaign.

Who fills the Supreme Court seats should in fact always be an issue, and perhaps in this fashion Justice Scalia serves us one more time. Grant that it should be somebody of such equal intellect.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Luke's Lutheran Church, Buffalo Wyoming

Churches of the West: St. Luke's Lutheran Church, Buffalo Wyoming:

Classically styled Lutheran Church, St. Luke's, in Buffalo Wyoming. It's one of two "St. Luke's" in Buffalo, which is a fairly small town, the other being the Episcopal Church.

The Korean War in Film

 American infantryman, Korean War.  He's equipped in the archetypal Korean War fashion, as he's carrying an M1 Carine oddly equipped with a grenade launcher, he has two rifle grenades in the pocket of his M1943 or M1951 field jacket (they differ only in shade of OD) and his wearing M1943 combat boots, a pattern common to the war but already obsolete by several years.  next to him is a Soviet light machinegun.

I recently posted an item on the Vietnam War in film, and therefore can hardly ignore the Korean War, although its a somewhat ignored war in any event.  Certainly, in terms of movies, it's easy to count the number or really well known Korean War films on one hand, in contrast with the numerous ones that an average movie viewer could name that involve Vietnam, let alone World War Two, the two wars it came between.

Still, the Korean War was a major war with nearly as many casualties from 1950 to 1954 as the Vietnam War had between 1958 and 1975.  That says something about the war in and of itself. So, why are so few films well known?

Well, coming between the World War Two ,and the Vietnam Wary, would help explain it.  Just being that close to World War Two alone may explain it. But there are few worth noting, and probably a lot more than I'm not familiar with and should know.  Indeed, after I decided to post this item, I found that there are, in fact, a lot of Korean War films, a lot of which were filmed in the 1950s. We just don't hear about them.

We look at a few here, in no particular order.

Pork Chop Hill.

Pork Chop Hill is the best known, and probably the best American, film on the Korean War.  Featuring Gregory Peck  as an infantry commander who leads an assault on the hill, the film is one of the very few films ever made which actually show artillery explosions looking like they really do in real life.

This drama depicts a real battle, although its a fictionalized account.  It's probably the only one of these films anyone hears of, because it is a very good film and didn't get drowned out by later Vietnam War films.  It was released in 1959.

It has, I should note, an interesting feel to it.  It doesn't feel like either the fairly heroic films about World War Two, or the more cynical films about the Vietnam War.  Perhaps that's also why its around still.  It gets the feel of the Korean War, to Americans, right.

Material details in this film are excellently done, which is no surprise as it was filmed relatively soon after the end of the war.  The film uniquely portrays the introduction of body armor, which did come in during the Korean War.

The Steel Helmet

The Steel Helmet is a Korean War film known to at least Sam Fuller fans as he wrote and directed it.

The film was released in 1951, during the early stages of the war itself, and is really gritty in the Fuller fashion.  Fuller's most famous war picture is The Big Red One about World War Two, but fans of that movie will see some common elements in this one, including a cigar chomping soldier (Fuller was a cigar fan) and a soldier (the same character in The Steel Helmet, as opposed to two different characters in The Big Red One) who is a retread from an earlier war.  Indeed, a couple of characters are in this Fuller film.

This film is only okay, and definitely not great.  It appears to have been filmed mostly on set, maybe entirely on set, and it shows it.  It is sort of a military film noire, which if a person is familiar with Fuller, makes sense.

In material details, this film is only so so, which probably reflects the budget and the studio filming.

M*A*S*H

This title will appear twice here, once up here in the films and once down below in regards to television.  The reviews will be distinctly different.

This movie is probably  the most famous movie set during the Korean War, but don't fool yourself, it's really about Vietnam.

Okay, I know that the film is set in Korea, and I also know that it's based in the legendary novel by a surgeon who actually served in a MASH unit during the Korean War, but the film, even though it follows the plot line of the novel, is so heavily infused with a late Vietnam War atmosphere that it dominates the film.  Korea is only a backdrop to the move.

Which is a shame, as that really wrecks the movie in my view.

The books is a heavily satiric, and indeed somewhat sophomoric, look at a Korean War MASH unit.  But it is a very good book and uniquely catches the dialog and atmosphere of the times.  Richard Altman's movie version, however, feels like a late satiric Vietnam War film.  All in all, in spite of how well this film is regarded, I'd skip it.

In terms of material details, while I don't like the film, it is very well done.

 The Bridges at Toko-Ri

This 1954 film was based on a novel by James Michener which was well regarded at the time.

I frankly don't like this film about Navy pilots in the Korean War, perhaps simply because of the feel of the film.  It looks and feels like a Hollywood film, and therefore the feel is just wrong.  And it has something of the strange small scene feel to it that some films of this era do.  Like quite a few of the Korean War era films I've watched but can't recall for this thread, it seems sort of lost in time and it strikes me it sort of was at the time it was made.

Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War

This is a South Korean movie, and it is what Saving Private Ryan is to the U.S. Army in World War Two in the context of the South Korean Army and the Korean War.

I've only seen part of this film, unfortunately, but the parts I've seen are excellent. The title is somewhat literal as it follows the fate of two brothers during the Korean War.  It's an extremely gritty film and uniquely portrays a South Korean viewpoint towards the war.  Perhaps because this film is relatively recent, it's production values are much better than almost any other Korean War film.

Fixed Bayonets

I know that I've seen this film, but can't recall much about it other than that I wasn't particularly impressed.

This movie is a 1951 character study about a soldier forced into leadership as his unit faces horrific attrition.  Filmed surprisingly early in the war, the film has a not too surprising small scene feel to it.  I've seen the whole movie, but it didn't make enough of an impression on me to really be remembered.  I recall at least the North Korean details of the film being materially weak.

This film also suffers, like many Korean War films, from the odd aspect of depicting Korea as basically empty. The units are extremely isolated.  In reality, Korean is a densely populated peninsula.

Take the High Ground

Take the High Ground is one of two films made in the 1950s which portrayed basic training, the other being the classic The D.I.  Interestingly, although there had been over a million men through military training at the time, both films were set in the times in which they films, with the 1953 Take The High Ground set during the Korean War.  Perhaps that's because basic training of that type had only recently actually been institutionalized, with much of the fairly recent World War Two training having been under somewhat different systems.

This is a film I've seen but don't recall well.  From what I recall, however, it does a good job of getting the feel of Korean War basic training right.  After the Korean War, probably to the surprise of many, Amy basic training moved towards Marine Corps basic training and became more like it, up until the introduction of women in basic training platoons.  That's reflected in part by the fact that DI's in this film are depicted correctly in uniforms that did not feature the M1911 Campaign Hat, which was something that was reintroduced by the Marines for DI's and then latter adopted by the Army.

Strategic Air Command

This isn't a Korean War movie per se, but deals with a topic that's sort of Korean War themed and it was filmed at the tail end of the Korean War.

This film deals with the recall of a World War Two pilot into the Air Force.  That happened quite a bit during the Korean War, but this film oddly decides to put that pilot into the Strategic Air Command instead of Korean combat. So, no Ted William's moments (recalled fro professional baseball into the Marine Corps as a pilot). 

The film is melodramatic in my recollection and not a good one, in spite of featuring Jimmy Stewart, who had been a real World War Two bomber pilot.

Television

M*A*S*H

Okay, now down to the perhaps even more recalled television series M*A*S*H..

This is one Korean War drama that nearly anyone who owns a television has to recall, as it's still on television all the time as a rerun.

I was a fan of this series as a kid, but I have mixed feelings about it now, even though I'll occasionally catch it as rerun even now. Well acted and written, the very long running and hugely popular television series was billed as a comedy when it was first released, even though it was a dark comedy even then. While it always had comedic elements, as the series progressed towards its final seasons it was heavily moving towards being a drama.

The series varies distinctly from its early, middle and late seasons.  The early seasons are extremely faithful to the book and do a better job of portraying the feel of the book than the later seasons.  The middle seasons were perhaps the most comedic, and the late ones the most dramatic.

While this series was enormously popular, its only the really early ones that get the feel of the book, and to some extent, the Korean War, right.  The series ran so long that the tour nature of the war, in which servicemen were in the war for only a little over a year, is completely lost.  Running much longer than the war itself, the series began to have sort of a peculiar feel to it, for those history minded.

One thing worth noting about the series, as compared to the movie, is that the Radar Reilly character, who is played by Gary Burgoff in both the film and the series, and is the only actor to make that transition, was played much differently in the series.  The movie portrays the character much more accurately than the series, outside of its first couple of years, as the movie (and the first year or so of the series) accurately reflects that character as a cynical devious professional soldier, as opposed to the lovably childlike character he later became in the series.

On material details, the most accurate ones in terms of materiality are the early ones, but the series never became bad in these regards.

The Phil Silvers Show

This one is another one which, like Gomer Pyle USMC in the Vietnam War list, will surprise people.

The Phil Silvers Show is better remembered as Sgt. Bilko, about whom it was concerned.  The show actually was introduced in the last year of the Korean War, even though it addresses the war in no way whatsoever.  It really shows, however, how common and even comfortable poeple had become with military life, such that a show focused on it, as a comedy, would be popular.

It can't be regarded as accurate in any fashion, but it's interesting to note its existence at the time.  This series involved a devious career enlisted soldier stationed in the United States.  The war isn't a factor in the series at all, which seems rather strange in context.

The Big Speech: Acts of cowardice

It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been committed for fear of not looking sufficiently progressive.

Charles Pierre Péguy Notre Patrie, 1905

Advertisments in History: 2016 Super Bowl Jeep Ads

Jeep apparently ran two ads during the 2016 Super Bowl. Both are getting a lot of discussion.

Unlike Chrysler's series of adds recalling their founders, Jeep's ads are not focused on one single episode, but they do incorporate their past in an interesting fashion, noting that they've been around now for 75 years. The one getting the most press is their black and white stills ad, which is a still in all but one photo.  One photo features a moving tear.

It's quite well done, and it nicely recalls its military history.

The other does just a bit as well, but just a bit.

Odd headline: Mike Coffman, Jared Polis want to end the military draft

From the Denver Post.

Polis is a Colorado Congressman who is sponsoring a bill in  Congress with others.  The oddity of the headline is the assertion that it seeks "to end the military draft".

The US hasn't drafted anyone since 1973.

What the bill really proposes to do is to end the Selective Service System, which cost the US taxpayer $23,000,000 per year.

Abolishing it makes sense as the US isn't going to be drafting anyone and, based on past experience, it is capable of creating a conscription service pretty rapidly.  It did it in the low tech age of the Civil War, then again during World War One, then again, starting in 1940, for World War Two, and then again after World War Two for the Cold War.  If we had another big crisis like that we could get it done.

But we don't need it for the wars we're fighting now and we know that.

Random Snippets: Red state, Blue state?

 Lamartine rejects the red flag in 1848.

Red is the international color of socialism.  Socialist parties use, or used, it everywhere.  Communist nations, whose economic system was socialist, almost all used red flags. France's socialist party uses a red rose as its symbol.

So how did we, in the US, end up with red states and blue states?  It truly confuses me. The red states are the most conservative ones, and the blue states the  most liberal ones. The US doesn't have very many true socialist, but on a red blue scale shouldn't that be reversed?

___________________________________________________________________________________

Postscript

I posted this originally on September 9, 2014.

Since that time one surprising thing that has occurred is that  a bonafide socialist, Bernie Sanders, has not only been running within the Democratic Party for the Presidency, but he's been doing well in his run.  He beat Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire yesterday and he nearly beat her in Iowa a couple of weeks ago.  Lots of young people, perhaps not really knowing what they are declaring, are now self identifying as socialist.

Which makes the press's ongoing use of the "red state" moniker to describe Republican states nonsensical and moronic.  In this election, we have one person who really identifies with the red rose of socialism.  In her effort to try to head him off at the Democratic pass, the other candidate is lurching towards the left.  Just last week the socialist declared Wall Street to be a "broken model" and Clinton has been trying to distance herself from Wall Street, which of course is in her own adopted home state.  And there's no longer hardly any pretense in the Democratic Party this year of not being a left wing party.

So, press, red is the color of the hard left. Fix your analogy.

Mid Week at Work: Delivering the mail in Washington D.C., 1919.

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: The Jerk Line

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: The Jerk Line: The Jerk Line Reading a book this weekend about moving freight in the old west. For this post, the old west would be after people star...

The Big Picture: Library of Congress illustration of Canterbury Tales.

A fine example of what's wrong with our Supreme Court.

Apparently, before the Iowa caucus, somebody asked Hillary Clinton about pulling a Taft.

 Chief Justice, and former President, William Howard Taft in 1922.

Hillary Clinton was apparently wowed on Tuesday by the idea of appointing President Obama to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Clinton responded to an audience member during a campaign event who noted the next president will likely have a lot of Supreme Court appointments, report the Des Moines Register and the New York Times First Draft blog. The speaker wondered if Obama would be one of them.

“Wow, what a great idea,” Clinton said. “Nobody has ever suggested that to me. Wow. I love that.”

Clinton said “wow” one more time “as if giving herself an extra second to think of a good answer,” First Draft says.

As you will recall, William H. Taft, the nation's 27th President was later the 10th Justice of the Supreme Court.  Taft had actually always preferred the law over politics, and it was the Presidency that turned out to be a frustrating aberration for him.

Now, President Obama is certainly young enough to be in the Kindergarten of the current Supreme Court, given that some Supreme Court justice are positively ancient. But why would he make a good Supreme Court justice?  Well, let's check back in with Candidate Clinton.

“I’ll be sure to take that under advisement,” she said. “I mean, he’s brilliant. He can set forth an argument, and he was a law professor, so he’s got all the credentials. Now, we do have to get a Democratic Senate to get him confirmed.”

Oh, he has credentials.  And she lists them.  Let's look at those, they are:  1) he can argue, and 2) he was a professor.

Eh?

Those aren't credentials for anything other than being law professor.  And its sad that those the credentials for being that.

What law firms was he in?  Who was he an associate for?  What cases did he argue in court? What big contracts did he draft?  That's the law.

Academic law isn't the law.

And that's part of what's wrong with the United States Supreme Court.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Union Congregationalist Church, Buffalo Wyoming

Churches of the West: Union Congregationalist Church, Buffalo Wyoming:

An Auto Repair Tsunami

It all started, I think, this fall, when I was elk hunting late in the season.

I went up high into the Big Horns, high enough that I really couldn't get any higher without chaining up, and as I didn't want to do that, I decided to hike from there.

Now, as luck would have it, last year I blew a tire coming down out of the Big Horns, doing the very same thing, so I knew my tires were a bit iffy.  But tires are expensive, and therefore I didn't buy new ones.  I could get more miles on the tires of the 07 D3500, I was pretty sure.  I don't drive it as much as I used to, since I bought the Jeep.  And I did keep those tires for a year.

 The Jeep has frankly seen a lot more use than I originally thought it was.  A 1997, and one that had been in a wreck when it was nearly new, it became my daily driver when I hadn't planned on that.

Well, a second blow out coming down out of the Big Horns ended that, and I had to replace a tire.  And you can't replace just one tire. So, rather than get all four, I got two.  This past fall.

Well, a couple of months ago I went to Cody.  And while I do drive my Jeep around here everyday, I don't drive it on the highway for trips.  I use the D3500 for that.  It's newer, and it has fewer miles on it.

It's also diesel.

And, given its 07 vintage, it has a diesel particulate filter.

Now, diesel particulate filters are a bit of a pain, as they clog up. And when I bought this Jeep the Cummins engine it features was in the first year of production. For a year or two I had problems with the filter.  But after a couple recalls and some work at the dealership on the lines, that stopped being a problem entirely.

Until the trip to Cody.

Now, the check engine light had been on since I came back out of the hills a week or so from elk hunting.  But usually a few miles on the highway stops that.  Not this time.  And on my last day in Cody, I got the warning form the system that the filter was 80% blocked and I should go to the dealership immediately.  A call to a really good diesel shop here in Casper revealed that I could, however, make it home if I didn't idle, and I didn't stop.  Indeed, while driving that old familiar smell of the system burning off the gunk was there, and the message stopped.

So it went to the shop.

Where it developed that, after 130,000 miles and a decade of use, it's filter system and exhaust was completely shot, and had to be replaced. 

Which isn't cheap.

But it sure added the power to it, I have to say.

So, about a month goes by and my son announces that the door of the 1997 D1500 will no longer close.  It's always been problematic.  So I went out and looked at it and found this:

Not good.

I think this truck had something happen to it before we owned it, and the kind attention its given in our hands wasn't always the case.  Anyhow, I took it down to the body shop and they welded it up and fixed it.  This is a lot cheaper than replacing the door, but it isn't free.

And that meant my son had to drive my Jeep to school, and I drove the D3500 to work.

I'd noticed when I had driven it the day prior ti seemed to drive a little funny.  But yesterday on the way to work the ABS light went on.  At noon, I had to drive to the DOT and I was loosing my brakes. When I came out of the DOT it was so bad that I knew I had to get it into the shop.  I debated the topic and clearly couldn't make it to my regular mechanics, so I limped it in to another shop I sometimes use that's close to my office, by which time, taking the back streets, it was really driving in crisis mode and making terrible sounds.

When I got out, I saw this.

Wheel should not be sitting at that angle.

Wheel bearings.

But it gets better, turns out that there was a problem with the front axle and my tie rod is having issues also.

Uff.

Well, it has 130,000 miles on it. So, even though the engines keep on keeping on beyond that now, not everything does, of course. So, I guess I'm at the rebuilding a few things stage, which is cheaper than buying something new, but not cheap.

And I don't like to replace my vehicles much.  My does, and would keep up with new ones all the time but for my huge disinclination to do that.  Indeed, I don't ever see myself replacing any of the vehicles I have and use right now, which of course doesn't mean that everything on them will work forever.  But the unexpected ways the repairs arrive is really the pits.

Lex Anteinternet: Killing people and breaking things. . . and women ...and going from stupidity to barbarity

A couple of years ago we ran this item, on the then new requirement (still not fully implemented) of requiring the Marine Corps to integrate basic training:

Lex Anteinternet: Killing people and breaking things. . . and women ...:  The Women's Mounted Emergency Corps.  "A mounted emergency corps of women has been organized as an auxiliary to the Second Fie...

Following that the Marine Corps briefly balked, leading to some proper speculation if they'd refuse to comply, but they fell in line, as indeed they have no choice but to do.

This past week, they were so in line that the senior commander of the USMC joined the senior commander of the Army to suggest that women should now be required to register for the draft.

There's something really anti natural, and barbarous about that.

No society, ever, has conscripted women as soldiers.  It's already acknowledged by all that women, by and large, have a hard time getting through combat training for physical reasons.

It hasn't been acknowledged, but should be, that women's psychological and physiological differences are such that most are not suitable to be combat soldiers.  They are suitable to be victims of assault, which a high percentage of female military personnel are, however.  And they are, of course suitable to bear life, which instantly  makes them unsuitable to be soldiers if that occurs.

And it does occur.  Recently the Stars and Stripes has been running photographs fairly frequently of female service personnel feeding babies the natural and original way, as there's a controversy on how to accommodate this while in uniform.

Conscripting women is, simply put, barbarous.

A Columbus Raid Film Competition.

Columbus Raid Film Competition.

Part of Columbus New Mexico's commemoration of the 1916 raid on the town by Villistas.

Hmmm. . . blog glitch

I have no idea why I have that odd snipped in the post below, and I can't clear it up.

My apologies, some computer glitch going on there.

Thanks a bunch Bundys, you ignorant twits

What I feared would happen when the Bundy's and their fellow travelers occupied Federal property has started to.

This isn't going result in the land "going back" anywhere.

It's instead revived a semi-dormant "kick the ranchers off the public land" movement.

I've seen one article in a Californian newspaper, one major syndicated columnist argues for this, and one column in the always greenish High Country News argue for this.  

All suffer from an understanding of the true nature of the leasing of the public land, which is not "welfare" in any sense.  I'll revisit that later.  But the delusional illegal and now bloodstained occupation of a wildlife refuge by the Bundy’s has revived the cries of "welfare rancher" and "get the ranchers of the public lands".

Thanks, Bundy's.  You delusional bunch if ignorant fools.

Ranchers in the West went through this before. This line of thought was popular in the 1980s with there being many "environmental" organizations that have, as core tenant that the Federal domain should not be leased and basically should not be used. They're as delusional about the impacts of their argument as Bundy and his fellow travelers and understand very little about the nature of what they propose.  In fact, the Federal domain is that because it was the land not worth homesteading prior to 1932 when all Federal land was withdrawn from that use, but it's always been land that has been grazed.  The overwhelming majority of ranchers today do not abuse that land in any fashion and in fact they typically make improvements to it that benefit wildlife as well as their own livestock. And, if the ranchers weren't grazing it, more often than not the ranches themselves would become ranchettes and housing developments, which are the death of the wild.  True environmentalist ought to be lauding ranchers rather than condemning them.

But that's hard when you have a bunch of delusional people like the Bundy’s who are supported by people who are hostile the United States and who would "take back" what they never owned.  Right now, this group of delusional people seems to include the Republican legislators of Utah.

Well, people who start wars cannot control where they end up, and people who only listen to their own propaganda rarely are aware of how much in a minority they are.  In this country in this day and age most people are not in agriculture and making an enemy of them, which is what the Bundy’s and their buddies are doing, ends one way, and that's not the way anyone who is involved in Western agriculture wants it to end.  Seriously, did the Bundy’s think that they were going to achieve anything?

If they did, they should have been made to live in New York City for a year.  Maybe a tour of the East would have the same eye opening effect on them that it did on Red Cloud. I.e., "we aren't going go to win this fight."