The tawdry spectacle of the disqualification hearing for D.A. Fani Willis continues down in Fulton County. Georgia. This of course is in the election subversion case against Donald Trump and his allies.
Friday’s many additional hours of testimony did nothing, in my opinion, to demonstrate any kind of conflict of interest in the case that would disqualify Willis.
The judge indicated he will issue his decision in the next two weeks
***
Most of the time, I’m the oldest guy in the room, so when it comes to memories, mine reach back the furthest. So it is a refreshing experience this week to hang out with my sisters, who remember things that I don’t.
It is also nice to be just a character in the memory of others as opposed to the being an aged family patrician and the sole custodian of the now-distant past.
I was almost 30 when my first child was born, and almost 60 when my first grandchild was born. That’s a lot of rings in the tree for me to try and recall when my descendants ask me specific questions.
Besides, the way I tell a tale is *my* way, not necessarily with any higher quotient of accuracy than anyone else who was there at the time — yet I’m the only one around. And of course, the more distant in the past an event occurred, the more our individual versions are likely to diverge, which brings me to the phenomenon of memory consensus.
Within families, communities, countries, cultures — even on a species level — we ultimately tend to reach some sort of consensus about the past, though historians, ideologues, contrarians and poets continue to debate
And as much as I enjoy telling my descendants stories about my youth, I’m acutely aware from my journalism career that for a more well-rounded narrative, other sources ought to be interviewed. My version is only that — mine.
Then again, to the victors go the spoils, and nothing spells victory over historical memory better than outliving the others. So as we each add in more rings to our personal family trees, the story at some point becomes ours alone to tell…though a joint family memoir would no doubt do a better job than any of us could ever have done alone.
As the saying goes, there’s your version, my version and then there is the truth and none of us is lying.
(This is from March 2022.)
Thanks to Journal of the Plague Years for reprinting my essay, “Accountability Denied.”
HEADLINES:
Crowds chant defiance as they bid farewell to Navalny (BBC)
Israel’s killing rage (Al Jazeera)
Japan’s population crisis was years in the making – and relief may be decades away (CNN)
Arizona bill would make shooting and killing migrants on property legal (NBC)
Border Crackdowns Won’t Solve America’s Immigration Crisis (WSJ)
U.S. prescription drug market in disarray as ransomware gang attacks (WP)
Trump seeks delay of trial on mishandling classified documents (Reuters)
Haley wants Trump legal cases ‘dealt with’ before election (Politico)
Nikki Haley can’t win the Republican primary with 40%. But she can expose some Trump weaknesses (AP)
Trump Is Broke as Heck and Completely “Embarrassed” by It (TNR)
Judge hears closing arguments in Fani Willis disqualification hearing (The Hill)
Journalist Catherine Herridge held in contempt for not revealing source (WP)
Elon Musk Sues OpenAI and Sam Altman for Violating the Company’s Principles (NYT)
The Mindblowing Experience of a Chatbot That Answers Instantly (Wired)
Alphabet Faces ‘Clear and Present Danger’ of Falling Short in AI (Bloomberg)
Google's Gemini flop raises the question: What exactly do we want our chatbots to do, really? (Business Insider)
Zelensky Challenges Putin To Settle Ukraine War On The Dance Floor (The Onion)
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