He doesn’t have to see how small the crowd is

My Sunday movie was The Tuba Thieves. Yes, there is theft of tubas, but the movie isn’t about that. The backdrop of this documentary is the theft of tubas from Los Angeles high schools from 2011 to 2013. We see a re-enactment of one and the discovery of another. Every so often we are shown a list of the number of tubas stolen in a season. But that’s about all there is in 90 minutes of movie about tubas and their theft. The movie is really about listening. There is a group of deaf people we encounter several times through the movie. There are scenes of music while deaf people sign to each other. There is a discussion of airplanes flying overhead (with decibel levels shown) and sonic booms. There’s a recreation of the first performance of 4’ 33” by John Cage (look it up!). There are a lot of scenes of just listening to the sounds of the environment. Sometimes they were so quiet I wouldn’t have noticed them if the closed captioning didn’t clue me in. I enjoyed it, though will say it is one of the more bizarre documentaries I’ve seen. On the Metacritic page for this film the six professional reviewers gave it a 77 out of 100, with scores ranging from 100 to 42. The four user reviews gave it 2.8 out of 10. Professional critics liked it, ordinary people didn’t. A while back I wrote that there were calls for Biden to certify the Equal Rights Amendment, granting equal rights regardless of sex, to be part of the Constitution. I also explained the dubious state of the amendment and why people thought it was up to Biden and is something he could do. Morgan Stepehns of Daily Kos reported that Biden did call for the ERA to be made part of the Constitution. He declared that it is ratified.

The amendment would need to be formally signed and certified by National Archivist Colleen Shogan in order to become law. According to NPR, supporters of the ERA are expected to protest in front of the National Archives office, urging Shogan’s signature. She has previously stated that she will follow the opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel, which suggests that the courts or Congress must decide the amendment’s fate.

The big reason for Shogan’s reluctance is the text of the ERA had a 1982 expiration. It was renewed and that deadline also passed. The last ratification came after that later deadline. In the meantime a few states that ratified it withdrew their ratification. Some people are wondering why Biden waited until the last few days of his administration to make that declaration. There is no time left for him to take the case to a court or to Congress if the Archivist doesn’t agree with him. So thanks, Joe, for the declaration of support. But it doesn’t mean much and no action will be taken while Republicans are in charge. Alix Breeden of Kos reported that the nasty guy has shifted his inauguration from outside to the Capitol Rotunda. The reason is harsh weather. The Rotunda is a historic place, but it isn’t all that big. It might hold hundreds. It can’t hold millions. A lot of people who were going to watch it in person won’t fit. So they’re invited to the Capital One Arena to watch it on the jumbotron. Yeah, that’s quite a letdown. And the ticket supporters now see as useless, why that’s now “commemorative.” For those who donated $1 million to the inauguration fund to get a prime seat, that will translate to an Arena suite. Why did he make the change? Security is proposed. Bad weather is the stated reason. As for security, the Secret Service knows how to make inaugurations secure. They now have three days to rework those plans. As for the weather. The last time the inauguration was indoors was Reagan’s second in 1985 when the temps dropped to 7F. I’ve heard (alas, I don’t have a link) that while an Arctic blast will come through the next few days the forecast for noon on Monday in Washington is 22F – the same temperature as Obama’s second in 2013. In the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos by Greg Dworkin, there is a tweet by former VP candidate Tim Walz. He’s shown in his flannels and stocking cap with snow coating him and his microphones. He captioned it with a phrase I heard when visiting Alaska, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.” In the body of the roundup Dworkin included a tweet by Judd Legum:

This, to me, seems less about “danger” and more about crowd size. A lot of people won’t want to come out in very cold temperatures and Trump doesn’t want to be photographed addressing a small crowd.

So the probability of a crowd on the National Mall smaller than in 2017 means shifting to the Rotunda where he doesn’t have to see how small the crowd is.