Author Archives: Amy Farr Robertson

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About Amy Farr Robertson

Civil Rights Lawyer. Dog Lover. Smartass.

Does this make me an Illuminati?

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As will soon be tediously clear, I have started taking photography classes.  Not for the first time, either.  I got a serious 35mm camera* for high school graduation, took a class at the local rec center, and somehow convinced myself I knew what I was doing.  There ensued some deeply meaningful but thoroughly awful photographs, including a few that got published in the Swarthmore college newspaper after I beat out a highly competitive field of approximately zero other people for the title of Assistant Photo Editor.  So not kidding.

Herewith an example of my deeply artistic but pathetically incompetent college photography and dark room skills:


I carried the camera around campus for four non-contiguous years and then around Taiwan and other parts of Asia for the next three non-contiguous years, taking the occasional brilliant photograph, and boatloads of expensive-to-develop 35mm crap.  Actually, one of my funniest sets of travel photos was from a cross-country drive I took somewhere in the middle of law school, in which I guess I discovered real mountains for the first time, because I have close to an entire roll of slides devoted to distance shots of fields, lakes or — most commonly — the road with mountains in the background.  I now call that “the view from my morning commute.”

A few years ago, Tim gave me a seriously good DSLR camera and after spending too long using it on “auto” while trying to remember what the eff an f-stop was, I decided earlier this year to take a class.  I’m having a blast!  The first round of classes — Digital 101 at Illuminate Workshops — reacquainted me with f-stops, shutter speeds, and ISO, introduced me for the first time to the majority of the buttons and data on my camera, and then moved on to a long-overdue introduction to composition.

We had homework, which like a good little student nerd, I did.  For the first class, the instructor asked us to experiment with shutter speed and aperture:

For the second class, we were supposed to take a portrait and a “macro.”  Oh, and I forgot to mention, the instructor displays and critiques our photos.  My classmate Gabriela went first. Her macro was a stunning photo of a jade bracelet on a mirror.  Her portraits looked like this:

The reason her portraits looked like this is because SHE TOOK THIS PORTRAIT!  Why, might you ask, is Gabriela in Digital Photography 101?  No clue, but she is hilarious and asks great questions, so I’m glad she’s there.  For example, had we not reviewed Gabriela’s boudoir photo of a shapely — mostly naked — woman photographed from behind, I would not have learned that to get good photos of a naked tuchis, you have to request the owner of the tuchis to, um, clench.  The class discussed this in a professional manner, while I exerted superhuman effort not to snicker.

But then it was my turn.  Here is my macro homework .

Seriously.  We went from jade bracelets and naked tuchii to, um, a rock. Luckily my portrait homework was of my mother-in-law, so I held my own in that division!  (Though, for the record, she was fully clothed.)  The instructor was very kind to my rock, but did use it to start to teach us how Photoshop can be used to make photos more interesting.

So I’m planning to use the blog to post my photography practice from time to time, and I’m putting all of what I think of as my more interesting practice photos on Flickr, so if you’re really bored, you can hop over there and take a look.  I’m partial to architecture and abstract and averse to portraits, so there will be lots of stuff that looks like this:

Which likely only I find interesting.  Still, the occasional “ooh” or “ahh” in the comments would make me smile!

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* My photography instructor – and most of the world, I gather – would now call it a “film camera,” because of course in 1978, we didn’t have digital cameras.  If I recall correctly, this is called – in the linguistics biz – a “back formation.”  I love back formations.  Think about it: acoustic guitar; snail mail; chicken fried chicken.  I’m not sure about the last, but I love it just the same.

We need a Language Police.

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Of which, of course, I’d be Chief.

Our jurisdiction would be broad:  grammar; punctuation; semantics.  But our most important task would be punishing language abuse.   Today’s perp:  The NYT.  The charges are based on a sentence fragment in today’s Times that is superficially just crappy writing, but is in fact stunningly offensive.  In an article discussing Michelle Obama’s white ancestors, the writer makes clear that the family of the First Lady’s white great-great-great-grandfather owned her great-great-great grandmother.  At the time their child — Mrs. Obama’s great-great-grandfather, Dolphus T. Shields — was conceived, the white slave-owner was 20; his slave only 15.  The article continues:

Such forbidden liaisons across the racial divide inevitably bring to mind the story of Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings. Mrs. Obama’s ancestors, however, lived in a world far removed from the elegance of Jefferson’s Monticello, his 5,000-acre mountain estate with 200 slaves. They were much more typical of the ordinary people who became entangled in America’s entrenched system of servitude.

Just a bunch of random, ordinary people of, you know, a couple of different skin colors, who — passive voice! — became entangled, you know, like you do when you are charging too many electrical devices and the cords end up on the floor, or your dog puts one too many rope toys in front of the back door and, you just, you know, become entangled.  No one’s fault.  That lethal system of violently-asserted racial superiority, oppression, and death was just lying around entangling ordinary people.

Rachel L. Swarns, you are under arrest for First Degree Language Abuse.

Ms. Swarns — who has apparently written a book about Ms. Obama’s multiracial ancestors — goes on to perpetrate this egregious sentence, which may form the basis of a referral to my colleagues with the Journalism Police or possibly the History Police.

[Ms. Obama’s great-great-great grandmother] had more biracial children after the Civil War, giving some of the white Shieldses hope that her relationship with [the white slave-owner] was consensual.

W.T.F.  There is no universe in which the sexual relationship between a master and a slave can be consensual.  Nor did the end of the Civil War magically turn former slaves and their former owners into free agents.

I get the motive for this:  we don’t want to offend the tender feelings of Mrs. Joan Tribble — “a retired bookkeeper who delights in her two grandchildren and her Sunday church mornings” — by suggesting that perhaps some of her distant ancestors were, um …. how can I say this delicately yet factually? … slaveowners.  Because of course “[s]ome of Mrs. Tribble’s relatives have declined to discuss the matter beyond the closed doors of their homes, fearful that they might be vilified as racists or forced to publicly atone for their forebears.”

How the hell can we teach history if we’re unwilling to just tell it like it is?

Headline: White Conservative Gadfly Goes to Jail; Dislikes Gravy

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That’s how the headline should have read in the center, front, above-the-fold article in today’s Denver Post.  I wish I were kidding.

Douglas Bruce went to jail for 104 days and faced cruel and unusual punishment:  the rolls were cold and the gravy tasted funny.  And he’s gonna sue.

I don’t know who to be more furious with:  Bruce for being a selfish jerk, or the Denver Post for devoting so much space on its front page to a middle class white guy who goes to jail for just over three months and fails to receive gourmet-level cooking.

Denver Post, Mr. Bruce, I’d like you to meet Troy Anderson.  Mr. Anderson has been in solitary confinement at the Colorado State Penitentiary for 12 years.  In those 12 years, he has not been allowed to exercise outdoors.

I’d have loved to introduce you to Shawn Vigil but, sorry to say, he’s dead.  He committed suicide at the Denver County Jail in 2005 — after being locked up for a month in solitary without a sign language interpreter.  You see, Mr. Vigil was deaf.  He was in solitary with no way to communicate with his jailers.  Wonder what he thought of the gravy?  Perhaps the Denver Post will write a front page story about that.

Actually, the Denver Post did write about Mr. Vigil’s case when we filed.  This many words.   Though I don’t have the print edition, I’m confident it wasn’t on page one.  Former Post columnist Susan Greene* also wrote about it in more detail, but of course she’s not there any more.  Can’t have someone providing nuanced coverage of marginalized people.

Back in the day, Spy Magazine had an equation for how many column inches a story would get in the New York Times based primarily on the number of people killed and the distance of the event from Times Square.**  Although I’m not a math major, there has to be some sort of equation at work here:  R x C x L x G where R = race, C = class, L = length of sentence, and G = quality of gravy.  In the newspaper world, being white (r = 100) and middle class (c=100) will completely outweigh the length of your sentence and other conditions.

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* Full disclosure:  Susie is a friend.  And also a kick-ass journalist.  The lack of her voice (and other recent departures) in the Post makes it not much more than People Magazine:  Denver Edition.

** Yes, of course it’s on the internet:  the November 1989 issue of Spy Magazine.    The equation is on page 56.  Check out page 55 for proof that Donald Trump has been annoying us for a long, long time.  And generally peruse the issue to take yourself back to a time when being a smart-ass, sarcastic, irony-appreciating young law grad felt fresh and new.  Or maybe that was just me.

[June 2:  Edited for accuracy.]

Legal Research Graph

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The pattern will continue — bouncing between 2 and 10 — up to the moment the brief is filed.  Indeed, I have been known to stop for a game of tennis ball fetch just before typing in the boilerplate “Conclusion” section.

“Whatever” — how have I overlooked this blog?

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I just had to link to this excellent explanation of privilege.  Most of the time when you say something like “nondisabled straight white men are privileged,” you are either accused of being accusatory, accused of overlooking millions of poor nondisabled straight white men, or accused of overlooking affirmative action.  John Scalzi explains that being a NSWM is like playing a role playing game on the lowest difficulty setting.  Note:  I play precisely zero role-play games, but the wonderfully-written extended metaphor is very accessible.

Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.

His follow-up post responding to comments and criticism is good too, as is his post ridiculing some of the stupid and/or assaholic comments.  From his comment on comments:

2. Your metaphor/analogy is good, except for [insert thing that commenter finds not good about the metaphor/analogy]

Well, yes. Metaphors are not perfect; it’s why they’re metaphors and not the thing the metaphor describes.

What’s even cooler about this post for me is that it introduced me to his blog, Whatever, and I now have the delightful adventure of reading through 15 years (!) of entertaining writing.

Happy Mothers’ Day

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And a tribute to the awesome mothers in my life.  Thanks for all you’ve taught me.

Mom Ruth Blau and mother-in-law Nora Fox at our wedding in 1993.

Grandmother Edith Blau sometime in the 1980s.

Grandmother Helen Farr Smith (Robertson) Love sometime in the 1950s.

And my sister-in-law Terri Robertson with my niece & nephew and their Aunt Amy — my favorite title!   Photo ca. 2000.  The kids are graduating from middle school & high school, respectively, next month; I have waaaay more gray in my hair; and somehow Terri still looks the same!

Late comment:  What does it say about my obvious genetic heritage as a nerd that both of my *grandmothers* are wearing suits?  Between that and the fact that I was partially gestated at a law school, my inevitable nerdiness was predestined.

My mother is lucky I wasn’t born with a copy of Black’s Law Dictionary in my hands!

“Fail.” You keep using that word . . .

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Since my brother and I appear to be communicating by blog these days (::waving::  Hi, Bruce!), I’d like to respond to this post* by paraphrasing my second favorite movie line:**  “‘Fail.’  You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Republicans are fond of saying that Obama is a failed president, that his policies have failed, and that there’s just a whole lot of fail going on.  The only possible definition they could have in mind for the word “fail” is “not doing what Republicans would like a president to do.”  Because by any reasonable, apolitical, measure Obama is a resounding success.  I’d really like to know how the definition of “fail” accounts for:

  1. Killing bin Laden.
  2. Saving the US auto industry.
  3. Repealing “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” ending defense of DOMA in court, and supporting marriage equality.
  4. Supporting the overthrow of Gaddafi.
  5. Signing the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
  6. Getting us out of an expensive and destructive war we should never have started.
  7. Appointing two righteous women to the Supreme Court.
  8. Passing Obamacare.
  9. Passing the Stimulus.
  10. Passing Wall Street Reform — not enough, but it’s better than nothing.

This is just sort of Amy’s top ten; there are a number of websites devoted to listing the President’s accomplishments, including

There are, in fact, several very business-oriented metrics that suggest President Obama is a success.  For example, the Dow was at about 8,000 when Bush left office; it closed at 12,820 on Friday.  (This continues the general trend that the Dow likes Democratic presidents much more than Republicans.) And Corporate profits are way up under Obama.   So, um, “socialist” doesn’t mean what they think it means either.

I think that leaves for the definition of “failed” when used as an adjective in the Republican mantra “failed president” such things as

  • Failing to cut taxes for millionaires.
  • Failing to appoint Federalist Society members to the Supreme Court.
  • Failing to leave the health of our citizens to the mercies of the perverse incentives of the insurance industry.
  • Failing to continue the war in Iraq.
  • Failing to not be concerned about bin Laden.

Ultimately, it is perfectly reasonable for Republicans like my brother to disagree with Obama.  But calling his administration “failed” seems like a weirdly transparent but ultimately content-free branding campaign.

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* The upshot of Bruce’s post is that all teen-age boys do cruel things, so we should not judge Mitt Romney by his decision to assault a classmate to cut off his hair or physically trick a blind teacher into walking into a door.   I don’t think any of my brother’s escapades (he takes the fifth but I’m aware of at least some small percentage of them) rise to the level of cruelty the Washington Post article describes of Romney.  But if in fact all boys do these things, perhaps it’s time to elect a girl to the presidency.

** My favorite is “Sometimes I sing and dance around the house in my underwear. Doesn’t make me Madonna.  Never will.”  Don’t ask me why.  I have actually used this quote on opposing counsel, though not to his face.  We have an opposing counsel who has, on his voice mail, a pompous quote-of-the-day, which you have to listen to, all the way through, before leaving him a voicemail.  It’s generally something from Gandhi, or the Buddha, or a Hallmark card, and it’s often very long, with no option to push # and just skip it.  After several years of superhuman effort exerted toward not saying, “Dude, you are working your ass off to deny the civil rights of people with disabilities; stop it with the quotes, already,” I finally left him two quotes of my own.  The first was this one; the second was “I used to be disgusted; now I try to be amused.”   No reaction to either one from him, but I cracked myself up!

Romney’s disability bullying

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Anyone who has made his or her way to this backwater in the blogosphere must have seen the Washington Post article on Mitt Romney’s history of cruelty and bullying at his prep school.  The event that has gotten the most attention is Romney’s bullying of a nonconformist classmate — a kid with dyed blond hair — that had overtones of gay bashing and homophobia.  But what about this incident:

One venerable English teacher, Carl G. Wonn­berger, nicknamed “the Bat” for his diminished eyesight, was known to walk into the trophy case and apologize, step into wastepaper baskets and stare blindly as students slipped out the back of the room to smoke by the open windows. Once, several students remembered the time pranksters propped up the back axle of Wonnberger’s Volkswagen Beetle with two-by-fours and watched, laughing from the windows, as the unwitting teacher slammed the gas pedal with his wheels spinning in the air.

As an underclassman, Romney accompanied Wonnberger and Pierce Getsinger, another student, from the second floor of the main academic building to the library to retrieve a book the two boys needed. According to Getsinger, Romney opened a first set of doors for Wonnberger, but then at the next set, with other students around, he swept his hand forward, bidding the teacher into a closed door. Wonnberger walked right into it and Getsinger said Romney giggled hysterically as the teacher shrugged it off as another of life’s indignities.

How does this speak to Romney’s views on people with disabilities?   There are many measures of how far the Republican party has sunk — from William F. Buckley to Sarah Palin, say — but in my neck of the woods, it couldn’t be sharper than the contrast between the man who signed the ADA and someone with so little respect for people with disabilities that he would humiliate his own blind teacher.

Would any of us be elected if judged by our adolescences?  Perhaps not, though mostly due to lingering squeamishness with recreational drug and alcohol use.  I cannot think of any friends or classmates who did anything close to the cruelty of assaulting a fellow student to cut his hair simply because he was different or physically ridiculing a disabled teacher.

Two other things strike me.  First of all, of course, the homophobic bullying has received far more attention than the disabiliphobic bullying.  Part of that has to do with the fact that the article was published within a day of both North Carolina’s shameful vote enshrining marriage discrimination in its constitution and President Obama’s declaration of his support for marriage equality.  But I’m concerned that that casual tone of the quote above indicates a greater societal acceptance of disability-related “pranks” than homophobic “bullying.”

I’m also struck by just how uncivilized Romney’s behavior was.  And not just once, but apparently over and over.   We Democrats are supposed to be the party of the uncouth, unwashed hippies, and the GOP the party of Brooks Brothers, using the proper wine glass, and not wearing white after Labor Day.  But the behavior described in this article is deeply uncivilized, and the fact that it was laughed off at an elite prep school speaks volumes.

How on earth could we trust this man to run our country?

Thank you, President Obama & a re-run

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Thank you for supporting marriage equality!  Keep moving us forward.   If you agree that this was an important step forward and that politicians, like puppies, should be rewarded for good behavior, throw some money toward keeping us moving forward.

And in honor of this step forward in civil rights, in response to the benighted state of North Carolina, and in recognition of the fact that I’ve been in trial prep and trial for the last month or so and have not had the time to come up with a new post, I’m rerunning a post from July 2010:

If we’re going to defend hetero marriage, let’s do it right. 

Folks opposed to marriage equality argue that if gays and lesbians are permitted that state-sanctioned status, it will have the effect of destroying heterosexual marriages.  In response, they promote legislation ostensibly designed to protect this venerable institution.  Most liberals campaign against these measures, on the grounds that they are unfair (what part of “equal protection of the laws” is unclear?) and irrational (straights have done a pretty good job of marriage destruction all on their own).

My view is:  if we’re going to use the legislative process to protect heterosexual marriages, let’s pass laws that might actually reduce stress and promote harmony in those marriages.  These measures would “save” those marriages in the sense that the people in them would remain happy with one another and therefore married, rather than in the way that opponents of gay marriage think it works:  that we’ll only stay together if we can smugly monopolize the legal label for our relationships.

Warning:  what follows traffics in the basest of gender stereotypes, derived directly from my own 16-year experience with heterosexual marriage.

The Bathroom Separation Act.  Men and women were not meant to share bathrooms.  The vast genetic differences in cleanliness perception and many practical differences in paraphernalia make sharing facilities a source of stress in 55% of heterosexual marriages.*  Under this proposed legislation, all new homes will be required to have two completely separate bathrooms adjacent to the master bedroom and money will be allocated from the federal budget to retrofit houses of married heteros with one extra master bath.

The Laundry Technology Act.  All new washers and dryers will be equipped with control panels of equal or greater complexity to a sound system of comparable price.  In addition, federal regulations will require garment labels to include one of the following two statements, as appropriate:  “This Goes In the Light Wash,” or “This Goes In the Dark Wash.”  At least 43%* of the bickering in hetero marriages concerns lack of laundry participation by one of the two genders commonly found in those unions.  This measure will not only promote increased participation, but will ensure that the result is not uniformly pink.

Music Parity Regulations.  FCC regulations will require at least one station in each broadcast area to play folk rock and heavy metal tunes on a strictly alternating basis.  Imagine the heterosexual marriages — not to mention lives — saved by not having driver and passenger switching constantly among stations in search of (to take a completely random example) Boston or The Indigo Girls.

Quality Motion Picture Act.  At least five movies each year will be required to have both exciting action sequences (car chases; explosions; zombies) and a plot with believable, grown-up dialog and characters.  Hetero marriages will flourish when husbands and wives not only attend but enjoy the same movies.

Full Funding for Public Education, Universal Health Care and Assisted Living Act.  Approximately 95%* of the fights in heterosexual marriages concern the kids’ schools, the doctor’s bills, and how to care for the in-laws without having them actually move in.  The FFPEUHCALA will ensure high quality public education, availability of heath care without forgoing food and heat, and a comfortable, safe old age for your in-laws** somewhere other than your home.  This legislation will avoid at least 3.2 million* heterosexual divorces each year.  In addition, just imagine all the quality time hetero couples will have in lieu of the hundreds of hours they now spend filling out insurance forms, fighting with insurance companies, filling out more forms, waiting on hold to insurance companies, and figuring out how to pay for things they already bought insurance to pay for.

Let’s see if those anti-marriage-equality folks really want to protect hetero marriage — let’s see if they’ll support all this crucial legislation.

* All statistics in this post are invented out of whole cloth.  They sure sound about right, though, don’t they?

** Love ya, Denver & Nora!

The Killing’s New Mystery.

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[Warning: Season One Spoiler Alert]

I love The Killing.  It doesn’t have the snappy dialog of Justified, but the characters seem incredibly well-drawn and real to me.  I strongly dissent from all the whining about the end of season 1 when we did not in fact learn who killed Rosie Larson.  Apparently the producer got major push-back for the simple act of treating her audience like grown-ups and showing us that the plot would not resolve itself as neatly as we all hoped.

Season 2 introduces a new, equally compelling, mystery, however:  How badly will the show fuck up the newly-spinal-cord-injured-mayoral-candidate story line?  As of now, he’s in the hospital starting to get his head around the fact that he’s paralyzed.  We’ve had a couple of scenes designed, I think, to underscore the reality of How Bad This Really Is, and we’ve watched his (it turns out) chickenshit campaign chief run away from him rather than talk about it.

But where does it go from here?  The way the entertainment industry generally treats disability suggests several likely scenarios.  WordPress lets you vote!