Wednesday, February 03, 2021

Zygote!

New Year’s opening: no resolutions. At my age, it’s too late. And no clichés about it never being too late. Better to begin with a mea culpa. Everyone loves a mea culpa. The admission of one’s shortcomings is a real attention grabber. Lawyers who tout their victories are the biggest bores. Even I must endure these braggadocios now and then at legal functions. There are, however, occasional instances when a young lawyer, seldom an older one, apologizes for a bad oral argument he or she thinks they made in my court. I seldom do not have the slightest recollection of these misperceived failures. My usual reply: “Please, don’t give it a second thought, you were terrific,” or, if I have a slight recollection, “You were fine, and your brief adequately covered the salient points.” These “stretches” are not muttered under penalty of perjury. And if the foregoing raises questions about the value of the constitutional right to oral argument, I defer that perennial inquiry for another day. But here’s a hint. Write a good brief. My lapse occurred in my December 2019 column. I received almost as many responses to that column as those in which I have written about cats. I hesitate to bring this up because it was over such a small, I would argue, excusable mistake. I misspelled “de rigueur.” I wrote “di” instead of “de.” Well, it is a foreign word. I never said I was perfect. And, yes, I wrote in the December column that a decent writer knows whatever he or she writes is not simply written, but, if it’s worthwhile, rewritten. And that involves the tedium of going over what you have already written. It surprised me that no one noticed a logical inconsistency in a phrase I wrote in the middle of a sentence, “I often hug people on occasion.” I suppose I could defend this apparent contradiction by arguing that on various occasions, say a birthday or a special holiday, I hug people. But that is not what I meant to say. I often hug people whatever the occasion with what I think is an acceptable regularity; acceptable because the people I hug are often offended when I don’t. “What, I don’t get a hug?” So, after enduring the phone calls and emails about “de rigueur,” I ask or write, “But did you get …?” The response is an interruption with something like, “Get what?” “One of my points,” I respond. The reply is something like, “You make so many, it’s hard to keep track.” In fact, one friend complained that there are so many topics in my columns that he is confused. He informed me that his grammar school teacher taught the class that when writing an essay, it is absolutely necessary to stay with one topic. No doubt that explains why his grammar school teacher never taught in college, let alone in high school. I must confess to the inward satisfaction I derive from inserting a few obscure references, or an acrostic now and then, in my columns. This practice is to be avoided in opinions and briefs. See People v. Arno (1979) 90 Cal.App.3d 505, 514, footnote 2. I think I picked up this annoying habit from my days as a lawyer in private practice. Our cards and stationery were a refined parchment. The firm and our names were embossed in Bodoni typeface, named after an expert printer in the late 18th century. Not to be confused with the Italian painter Boldini. The senior partner commented that only one in a hundred people would appreciate the quality, but it was worth doing. We wore silk suits with monogrammed shirts. That was then. I became a judge so I could wear jeans to work. Please don’t report me. I call our court the think tank with tank tops. Where was I? (The grammar school teacher would disapprove.) Oh, yes, the one point in my column that few people “got.” Of course, one doesn’t write a column so that readers “get” a cryptic point that a self-involved columnist writes. So, this is not an indictment of those who missed a point that I “hid” in plain sight. This relates to one of the topics I explored in my December column – the prevalent and revolting use of profanity. To be clear, profanity has its place when used sparingly in an appropriate context. My specific gripe was about the use, or, more specifically, my use of a single syllable profane word that revolts me. I am sick of it, not because it is profane, but because it no longer is. It is used with such frequency that it has become boring and unimaginative. So, I devised a substitute word. The careful reader (that assumes with most evidence to the contrary that columns are read with care) might get my point. But who reads a column with care over a morning cup of coffee? In my December column, I did mention my substitute word – “Zygote.” Biology majors had little trouble defining its meaning, but not everyone made the connection I had in mind. No doubt this is due to the shortcoming of a columnist who does not stick to one topic. And who has the time, let alone the interest, to look it up in a dictionary? I suppose a better word would have been “gamete,” but that sounds too much like “Damn it!” Of course, a single syllable word would be superior, but I could not find one that has an association with the word it replaces. Oh, well. So, with this my first-of-the-year column, in which I am half-way through my 32nd year of writing Daily Journal columns, I wish you who have stayed with me, to this my penultimate paragraph, Happy New Year! Penultimate, because I just thought of something. We will know if it’s truly a happy new year in November. Yes, I know judges are not supposed to express their political opinions. But I have not done so. How the election turns out will make it a happy or hopeless new year. This depends upon who wins. From my point of view, if my candidate does not win, we are ZYGOTED!

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