June 25, 2015

Language Log tracks down the old "Grin and Bear It" cartoon that Chief Justice Roberts quoted Justice Frankfurter misquoting.

I mentioned this in my earlier post on the Obamacare case:
In a sly reference to Nancy Pelosi's "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it," Chief Justice Roberts quotes an old Felix Frankfurter article — "Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes, "47 Colum. L. Rev. 527, 545 (1947) — that described a cartoon "in which a senator tells his colleagues 'I admit this new bill is too complicated to understand. We’ll just have to pass it to find out what it means.'").
But Language Log has the original Frankfurter passage...
Loose judicial reading makes for loose legislative writing. It encourages the practice illustrated in a recent cartoon in which a senator tells his colleagues "I admit this new bill is too complicated to understand. We'll just have to pass it to find out what it means." —Felix Frankfurter, "Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes," 47 Columbia Law Review 527, 545 (1947)
... and the original 1947 cartoon (showing the misquoted "what it means" for "how it works"):



ADDED: When I was a kid I liked to read the funny pages and "Grin and Bear It" was the one cartoon that was not accessible to me. I read all the cartoons and I read that, but I had to just trust that whatever the humor was, some day I would get it. Today is that day.

50 comments:

mccullough said...

We will find out eventually how it works. Just as we found how how Roberts works.

Owen said...

Dear Professor Althouse: why the continuing scrupulous attention to the original text? The Supreme Court no longer cares, why should we?

traditionalguy said...

Full Lawlessness is manifested now. It came from the top down until it now reigns in the Court that used to stop it after a few years of delays.

We now have a Honey Badger Court. It just don't care.

jacksonjay said...

That John Roberts is one sly MF'er!

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Originally, the cartoon featured two guys, one named Grimm and the other one Barrett.

Okay, I just made that up.

Perhaps now would be a good time to mention that watching Wallace and Gromit holds my attention for about 10 minutes, at the most, and I feel kind of guilty about that.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

That said, it's a hell of a lot of fun to put your hands up, wiggle your fingers and go, "CHEEEESE, Gromit! CHEEEESE!

Go ahead. Try it.

See what I mean?

PB said...

Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field has expanded to encompass the entire country.

Fernandinande said...

showing the misquoted "what it means" for "how it works"

"How it works" (or "what it does") is correct; funny that a cartoonist understood that but the gov't lawyers didn't. Ha ha.

Time to buy stock in Banana Republic.

Anonymous said...

It is correct to substitute "what it means" for "how it works" because words mean whatever we want them to mean. And because I said so.

SF said...

Grin and Bear It! I had completely forgotten about that strip, have vague memories of enjoying it when I was much younger.

SF said...

Geez, just looked it up in Wikipedia, and Grin and Bear It ran until this year?!? I don't think it's been in a newspaper I read for decades.

Hagar said...

"Humpty-Dumpty" John Roberts.

firstHat said...

yup, figures that ran the year that The Taft-Hartley Act happened. I wonder if that provoked the cartoon or just all the crap that came down through the FDR administration that could not then be undone. Just for fun do a search for federal laws passed in 1947. Interesting reading.

Chuck said...



noun
Britishinformal

noun: jiggery-pokery




Jiggery pokery!

Scalia: "The Court's next bit of interpretive jiggery-pokery involves other parts of the Act that purportedly presuppose the availability of tax credits on both federal and state Exchanges."

jiggery pokery: noun; deceitful or dishonest behavior.
Origin; (British informal) late 19th century: probably a variant of Scots joukery-pawkery, from jouk ‘dodge, skulk,’ of unknown origin.

Ann Althouse said...

I also remember another single panel cartoon that ran alongside "Grin and Bear It": "Mott the Hoople." Now, I have trouble finding anything about "Mott the Hoople," the cartoon. I see people referring to "Mott the Hoople," the novel, and the only thing anyone remembers about it is that Mott the Hoople, the rock band, got its name from the novel. And now I wonder whether anyone remembers even the rock band, in which case, the novel is almost fully erased from existence, and the cartoon seems ever more like a figment of my imagination.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

I recognize the name Mott the Hoople, but thought it was a David Bowie song. The song was actually All the Young Dudes, written by David Bowie and performed by Mott the Hoople.

They were referenced in the movie Juno.

Expat(ish) said...

@Ann, it's actually funny you mention the novel - I remember reading it as a lad, back in my "Still Life With Woodpecker," "Zarathustra," and "Siddhartha" phase. I did a 'look inside' on Amazon and had to wince at the writing. No idea how I read all that crap.

Perhaps better forgotten.

OTOH, I'd totally forgotten about the original "All the young dudes" and have kicked off a great Pandora stream. Thanks!

Cheers,

-XC

Original Mike said...

There was a time I would have found that cartoon funny. Not anymore.

Jim in St Louis said...

The misquote where "what it means" is substituted for "how it works"

I think that is a revealing misquote. The SCOTUS is supposed to read the laws and tell us “what it means”, to give us the interpretation based on the actual words in the actual law. What it (the law) means.

Congress and the Executive should be concerned with "How it works".


...or anyway it used to be that way, back in the old republic days.

walter said...

Frankfurter is also of the sausage genus.

JZ said...

My favorite Grin and Bear It: "Your honor, my client is entitled to a trial in front of a jury of his peers and there isn't a single pick-pocket on this jury!

Anonymous said...

Now, I have trouble finding anything about "Mott the Hoople," the cartoon

Are you perhaps thinking of "Our Boarding House with Major Hoople"?

http://www.bullworks.net/daily/board1944a.jpg

tim in vermont said...

My personal favorite peeve! Try getting a definition for any unusual word on google and it will be a band name, or an album, and that will be included in the "definitions."

A couple of recent ones: arsis, eftsoons.

I had no idea there was a novel called "Mott the Hoople" but now I want to read it just on general principles.

tim in vermont said...

I used to love Major Hoople.

Egad Martha!

Anonymous said...

When I was a kid I liked to read the funny pages and "Grin and Bear It" was the one cartoon that was not accessible to me.

There's an implied claim here that you were able to see some kind of point to Gasoline Alley. Color me skeptical.

Ann Althouse said...

Oh! I see now. It was "Our Boarding House," with Major Hoople. I'm confusing my Hooples!

Ann Althouse said...

@madisonfella

Thanks. I'd already figured it out by the time I read that.

tim in vermont said...

"Definition of HOOPLE

dialectal
: hoop; especially : a child's hoop for play"

Ann Althouse said...

@Paul

There were kids in "Gasoline Alley."

And speaking of rock music, "Gasoline Alley" is a great album!

tim in vermont said...

Which one was it that the catch line was "There oughta be a law"?

Wilbur said...

"All the Young Dudes" - I smile now remembering telling my college friend what the song was about and his astonished, if not horrified, reaction.

Our small-town daily newspaper ran one-panel comics that looked like they were from the turn of the century. "Out Our Way" and "Our Boarding House - featuring Major Hoople". I tried to understand them but even a precocious 10-year-old has his limits. Suffice it to say, my grandfather (born in 1878) like them.

Wilbur said...

Wow, the comments exploded with Major Hooples before I could publish. Glad I'm not the only one to remember it.

My favorite was The Katzenjammer Kids.

AllenS said...

Language police log --

All old books and movies that use the word "gay", which doesn't mean homo people will be banned.

tits.

Alex said...

Oral arguments are wondrous! No room for bullshit or Ritmos!

Wince said...

If you believed they put a man on the moon
Man on the Moon
If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve
Then nothing is cool


Appropriate for today's SCOTUS ruling, Mott the Hoople and all?

Man on the Moon

Mott the Hoople and the game of Life yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Andy Kaufman in the wrestling match yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Monopoly, Twenty one, checkers, and chess yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Fred Blassie in a breakfast mess yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Let's play Twister, let's play Risk yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
I'll see you heaven if you make the list yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Now, Andy did you hear about this one?
Tell me, are you locked in the punch?
Andy are you goofing on Elvis? Hey, baby
Are we losing touch?

If you believed they put a man on the moon
Man on the moon
If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve
Then nothing is cool

Moses went walking with the staff of wood yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Newton got beaned by the apple good yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Egypt was troubled by the horrible asp yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Charles Darwin had the gall to ask yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Now, Andy did you hear about this one?
Tell me, are you locked in the punch?
Andy are you goofing on Elvis? Hey, baby
Are you having fun?

Here's a little agit for the never-believer yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Here's a little ghost for the offering yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Here's a truck stop instead of Saint Peter's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Andy Kaufman's gone wrestling yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Anonymous said...

Mott the Hoople eventually supplied members of superband, Bad Company - which is what this ruling is.

Anonymous said...

Is it possible Roberts saved us from an even worse ruling by writing the opinion? I can't imagine how that's possible but I suppose it is.

gadfly said...

From Ann Coulter in 2005:

". . . we don't know much about John Roberts. Stealth nominees have never turned out to be a pleasant surprise for conservatives. Never. Not ever."

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Tim, there was a comic called "There Oughta Be a Law". I loved it when I was a kid, and I loved (and even got, eventually) "Grin and Bear It". Apparently "Law" was a ripoff of "They'll Do It Every Time", a comic I just stumbled upon in my search for "Law".

Hagar said...

It may be that the administration should not be so quick to celebrate this decision.
It is the second time in a major case where Chief Justice Roberts have disregarded the arguments of both Congress and the Executive Branch and just made up his own interpretation of a statute. That can hardly be good for the country in general either, since it sets a precedent for the Supremes, and perhaps not just the Supremes, to just make shit up and proceed to make decisions based on their own ideas of what they would like to have done.

rhhardin said...

Epstein on today's ruling (podcast)

Hagar said...

The thinking here is that what Roberts have done is not just a review of a Congressional statute or an Executive action, but is in itself an executive action.

theo said...

I learned to read at my grandmother's knee. She was a retired one-room schoolhouse teacher and she used the Sunday "funnies" to teach me to read at a very young age.

"Nancy" and "Louie" weren't much use but "Li'l Abner", "Pogo", "Little Iodine", "Dick Tracy" and all the rest were my preschool ticket to literature.

I still read the comics when ever I have the chance fifty five years later.

And Justice Roberts sucks, big time.

Anonymous said...

One of my favorites was Andy Capp. I still quote him.

He told his wife, "Of course you are entitled to your own opinion. I just don't want to hear it, that's all!"

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
n.n said...

We already had EMTALA, which is a universal health care law. Was Obamacare designed as a revenue law to explicitly redistribute costs (i.e. "shared responsibility"), combined with a legal triage function (e.g. Michelle Obama's job)?

Since insurance companies are regulated with slim margins, when did health care costs become inflated and unaffordable? Was it a compensatory or principle adjustment a la Unions, welfare, outsourcing, excessive immigration, etc.?

As for semantic games, that reached its maturity with classification of human life as commodity under the pro-choice doctrine, and progressed with institutional establishment of class diversity policies.

Hagar said...

It is doubtful that Roberts has done us a favor.
If Obamacare (or now SCOTUScare) is unsustainable, the longer it lasts, the worse the pain is going to be.
It would have been better if Roberts had cut off the life suppport to start with rather than coming up with his "tax" idea.

Hagar said...

"Too bad Congress and the Executive screwed up the writing of this law so bad, but we like the law, so we are going to uphold anyway."

Hagar said...

"Actually, w don't really know what it is we are upholding, but we are sure the intent is good, and surely someone can figure out the details later."

Uncle Pavian said...

I sort of got Grin and Bear it back in the late 1960s. Smokey Stover, though, was something I never could quite figure out.