I expect by now the outrageous tale of Judge Kenneth King of the 36th District Court here in Detroit has spread to your neck of the woods, but just in case it hasn’t…
Judge King is something of a showboat. No, he is a shameless showboat, no something about it. His courtroom actions are streamed on his YouTube channel, and you know what they say about courtroom cameras — sooner or later, someone’s going to play to them, and in this case, it’s the judge. He seems to consider himself an undiscovered court-TV personality, and has a fan group that he regularly interacts with on Facebook.
So the other day a local nonprofit brought a group of teens to his courtroom on a field trip, and one of them, Eva Goodman, fell asleep during the judge’s talk to the group. He didn’t take this well:
After speaking for about 45 minutes, King walked over to the young woman and screamed, “wake up!” Then he asked if he was boring her, before suggesting “there’s one in every group.”
Alas, Eva was very tired that day, and fell asleep again. Well. This was too much for King:
He ultimately decided she needed to “take a walk in the back to see where we keep our people who are disrespectful to the court.”
On Wednesday, King told the Free Press he felt disrespected mainly by her body language.
About two hours later, he had court staff bring her back into the room. At this point she’s wearing a green jumpsuit, the words “Wayne County jail” printed on the back. Her hands are cuffed in front of her body.
…Jumping from his seat, King repeatedly questions the young woman before offering his own comments.
“You sleep at home in your bed, not in court. And quite frankly, I don’t like your attitude,” King said.
Yes. He had this sleepy girl dressed in jail clothing, handcuffed and then? He held a mock trial, of sorts, and threatened her with juvenile detention. You really should read the story. It’s amazing.
But it gets worse. It turns out the reason the girl kept falling asleep? Her family is homeless. Not living-on-the-street homeless, but the more common variety of bouncing around from place to place with her mother and siblings, and the previous night had been a rough one. This came out later, when the circle of people who know about King’s courtroom had expanded well beyond his fan group.
The best thing written about it was this column by a Freep contributor, who pointed out, correctly, that this is one reason black teens run from police, etc.:
(H)is actions reinforced the pipeline to prison culture that community activists are continually fighting against. That culture includes everything from metal detectors and uniforms in public schools to forcing young people to cut their hair because it’s too long, or suggesting that wearing a hoodie or engaging in other normal teen activities are inherently suspicious and must be policed.
Precisely. It needs to be pointed out, again and again until people get it, that the reason Ferguson, Mo. exploded 10 years ago wasn’t the death of Michael Brown, but the years-long abuse of poor people by not only the police, but the entire judicial system, and you should read Radley Balko on this subject:
After the death of Michael Brown, we learned that black and poor residents of St. Louis County were essentially treated like walking ATMs. The mid-20th Century migration of white people to the suburbs, and then the exurbs — and their attempt to exclude black people each step of the way — resulted in an astonishing number of tiny “postage stamp” municipalities, most of which had their own police department and were funded by fines and fees imposed on their residents. The poorer the town, the more it needed fines and fees to operate.
Anyway, things aren’t going so well for King at the moment. His docket has been taken from him, he lost a teaching gig at Wayne State, and he’ll be lucky to keep his job, although he probably will, unless Fox News snatches him up and makes him a member of The Five or something.
But enough about him. Let’s turn instead to the turgid prose of Tim Goeglein, who apparently has found a sucker editor at the surviving daily in Fort Wayne, the Journal Gazette, willing to publish his columns:
He writes on Sunday of his misty water-colored memories of going to the Embassy Theater downtown to see old movies with Ma and Pa Goeglein:
The rain was pouring in monsoon-like waves in downtown Fort Wayne. The cars were splashing buckets-full of water hither and yon. People were skittering across the puddled streets like stones across ponds.
Everyone was being lashed by the fury of a Midwestern downpour, a soaker.
The windshield wipers clicking at record speed, my father pulled up our maroon Jim Kelley Buick LaSabre to the front doors of the Embassy Theatre on West Jefferson Boulevard.
All I remember seeing was a forest of umbrellas amid the bright, luminous, brilliant, beautiful lights of that singularly familiar Embassy marquee flashing its message: “Friday Nights at the Movies.”
Tim owns a thesaurus, but hasn’t absorbed the message that you don’t have to use all the synonyms when you look up an adjective.
It goes on — and on and on and on — until it reaches a sloppy climax with what else? The organ recital that preceded the movie:
We found seats midsection, and then, as if on cue, rising like a phoenix from the floor, as if out of nowhere, a kind of magic happened: the most glorious, riveting tones of a colossal organ as if from the highest plain of heaven.
Pipes of every tone and tempo kept us awash in the glory of pure sound, a kind of elixir for the ears.
It was the Grande Page Pipe Organ, rising before us as if from the MGM soundstage in Hollywood itself. Has there ever been a more amazing instrument in the history of our nation?
Well, yes, Tim. These theater organs were quite common in old movie houses. There was one in Columbus, which I heard when my mom took me to the old-movie screenings at the Ohio Theater there. There’s one in Detroit, at the Redford Theater. But I’m amazed at Tim’s amazement: Pipes “of every tone and tempo.” The “most glorious, riveting tones.” The MOST AMAZING INSTRUMENT IN THE HISTORY OF OUR NATION.” I’d think he was kidding if I didn’t know he wasn’t.
After one of his last columns, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Journal Gazette. Cruelly, they didn’t print it. So I will copy/paste it here:
I haven’t lived in Fort Wayne for nearly 20 years, but given the role I played in the loss of his White House job, I’ve since taken a particular interest in Timothy Goeglein’s writing, appearing occasionally in the JG’s opinion section. As a writer myself, and as one who wants everyone to be a better one, sometimes this is painful; I’ve rarely seen such floridly composed word salads, to use a phrase Tim might employ. I won’t call them “hate reads” — I’m trying to be a better person in my dotage — but my fingers often twitch toward an imaginary blue pencil to strip the lard, the filigree, and especially the adverbs out of his rhapsodical tributes to whatever misty water-colored memory is striking him today.
I’m also an editor, and know that self-editing is difficult. But can’t anyone at the Journal Gazette take a little hot air out of these balloons, perhaps by paring Tim’s “tall and willowy, thin as a rail” piano teacher down to just “willowy,” as that word literally means tall and thin? Or suggest that “a museum specializing in great art” redundantly states the definition of art museums, unless he knows of one that specializes in mediocre stuff.
To Tim, I offer my services as a writing coach. My email’s easy to find. Give me one paragraph, 100 words tops, on…something you dislike. Tight. No adverbs. We’ll start there. It may be a journey of a thousand miles, but it’s gotta start somewhere.
He won’t take me up on it. Sigh.
OK, Monday looms. Punch it in the face!
Dorothy said on August 18, 2024 at 6:44 pm
I am pretty sure that in more than 20 years of reading you, Nancy, I have never declared that I love you. Imma fix that now – I LURRRRRVVVV you. That letter to the editor was perfect!
I did see a story about Judge King, on NBC I’m pretty sure, and was stunned – STUNNED I tell you – that he did what he did. Has he never heard of the word empathy?! Or considered asking the young lady why she was feeling so tired that she fell asleep? He should be tarred and feathered. What a shit-for-brains, thoughtless, decrepit asswipe.
Did I use one too many adjectives to describe him? If so, I apologize.
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Icarus said on August 18, 2024 at 8:55 pm
OH man this story triggered me. One of last semesters at UIC I was in a class where we had a guest speaker. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune but not one of the heavy hitters. She noticed me nodding off and decided the best way to deal with it was to call attention to it.
The Prof was very much like Judge King, and I’m sure she held it against me on my next paper or exam. I wish I could remember who the reporter was. Is it wrong to also hope her career went nowhere?
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Julie Robinson said on August 18, 2024 at 9:20 pm
What a horrible man. I nodded off a bit myself at church this morning, as the guest preacher’s droning and power point presentation went on past the 25 minute mark. Nice guy, but it was a lecture, not a sermon, and the aforementioned power point was too small for most of us to read.
Happy Anniversary to beb, who, if I recall correctly, was also married 45 years ago today. We celebrated with Belgian waffles at a European chocolatier, then compounded the damage with a box to take home.
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Sherri said on August 18, 2024 at 11:55 pm
I saw that story about the judge. Unfortunately, that judge was just a minor petty tyrant compared to others who do far worse to kids, mostly, of course, black and brown kids. Listen to “The Kids of Rutherford County” for one story about kids being illegally jailed.
And absolutely read Radley Balko. It’s to the discredit of the Washington Post that he’s no longer a reporter there.
An organization I support is the National Police Accountability Project (https://www.nlg-npap.org/).
There aren’t many lawyers around willing and able to sue the police, especially in the states where the police most need to be sued, and the NPAP helps provide resources and training and support for lawyers attempting to hold the criminal legal system accountable.
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Deborah said on August 19, 2024 at 4:58 am
Great post Nancy. Loved your letter to the FW newspaper.
I hadn’t heard about that Judge and the young girl who had to endure his hideous behavior. The threat of putting her in a juvenile detention center reminded me of an experience I had when I worked on a juvenile detention center design project. The architecture firm I worked for at the time was designing a juvenile center in Illinois. At one of the meetings with the client that I attended they spent a long time discussing the view windows on the “cell” doors. It was explained that it was extremely important for the guards or workers at the facilities be able to see everything going on in the rooms not because the child might be causing trouble but because of suicide attempts which were apparently more common than you’d think. Imagine being a kid going through a life of homelessness and being set up for a future of the pipeline of prison future.
I think I’ve told that story about juvenile suicide in detention facilities here before, it’s a story I tell a lot because it left an indelible impression on me and I think people need to hear about kids going through that system.
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Jim said on August 19, 2024 at 5:32 am
Mr Hamberder sleeps ALL THE TIME excepting when he has his 50 hamburgers before his main meal .
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David C said on August 19, 2024 at 6:12 am
I always pick one long-shot candidate to take a flyer on. This is mine this year. She’s real Democrat, not a Blue Dog, running in North Dakota. She’s not an “I’m (barely) running against Marjorie Taylor Greene, send me money” type. Katrina Christiansen has something real to say. It feels like the kind of year the Democrats are going to break out.
https://www.katrinaforussenate.com/
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Jeff Gill said on August 19, 2024 at 9:15 am
Friend of this feed @NeilSteinberg in Chicago posted this am:
Just wrote the newspaper lawyer’s number on my leg with a Sharpie, as instructed. Ready to head downtown and face the day.
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Mark P said on August 19, 2024 at 10:05 am
It looks like RFK Jr might not make it onto the New York ballot (this may have been on the news but I haven’t seen it.) The only reason appears to be that he falsely claimed to be a New York resident despite having lived in California for about 10 years. His evidence of NY residency was a NY falconry license. Loweringthebar has an account. https://www.loweringthebar.net/2024/08/judge-rejects-rfk-jr-s-claim-to-be-new-york-resident-despite-valid-state-falconry-license.html
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Jeff Borden said on August 19, 2024 at 10:29 am
My hope my birth state of Ohio will find its way back to sensible was badly damaged today with a story in the NYT about how the state’s Republicans are gobbling up all the false immigration stories and voting fraud. There is no evidence, of course, for any of their beliefs, but they are all in on tRump and the fauxbilly with one asshole fretting he doesn’t want the state to become “Muslim run” like Minnesota. This doesn’t bode well for Sherrod Brown in the Senate, I guess. Ohio may soon be represented in the Senate by a lying fake hillbilly and a luxury car salesman. Where are the Tafts? The Voinovichs? The Kasichs? Is Ohio now another Indiana? It would seem so.
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Suzanne said on August 19, 2024 at 1:02 pm
An excellent piece, much better writing than Tim Goeglein.
https://www.the-reframe.com/the-whole-purpose/
“The whole point of the post-menopausal female. I guess it’s also the “the post-menopausal female” that gives the game away, because these creepy would-be masters of the rest of us have this habit of framing women in a way that suggests that women to them are entirely a product of the status of their eggs: their relative fecundity, their usefulness in increasing the stock of citizens (with a mostly-unspoken but easily detectable preference for white citizens), and their willingness to get down to the business of having as many of those children as possible, and raising them in a way that is acceptable to them, these would-be masters of the rest of us. And would-be masters of the rest of us are thick on the ground these days, and bold. A couple of months ago one of these creeps, a man named Harrison Butker whose whole purpose is to serve punt for the Kansas City Chiefs, got up at a graduation ceremony and told a bunch of women receiving degrees that they would only find their true purpose once they became the husband of a man like Harrison Butker and produced his children.”
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Sherri said on August 19, 2024 at 3:30 pm
If I had known that Kamala would tell all the old-school Dem strategists to pound sand when they told her she should stop saying “we’re not going back” and stop talking about how weird the GOP is, I would have been all in on switching to Kamala from the beginning! I don’t understand why anyone would think it’s a good idea to pivot away from a line that generated a spontaneous response from the opening rally just because some focus group didn’t love it.
This article does a good job of explaining the new messaging strategy we’re seeing: https://open.substack.com/pub/anandwrites/p/new-democratic-party-brat-pack
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Deborah said on August 19, 2024 at 5:02 pm
I’m really sick of the old school Democrats, those guys don’t get it (and they’re mostly guys of course). They didn’t do so hot during the time of my generation’s voting life. My husband has this statistic, he was first eligible to vote in 1968 (mine was 1972), so from 1968 until 2008, 70% of the presidents were Republican, but from 2008 until now 70% of the presidents have been Democrats. So were making progress but only since 2008. Can we please keep that momentum going, please?
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alex said on August 20, 2024 at 8:38 am
I know that plagiarism is a sin, but churning out original prose this dreadful is a worse one. Timmy has not redeemed himself.
Is there no one left at the Journal-Gazette who remembers L’Affaire Goeglein? Or is the paper circling the drain like the News-Sentinel was when it used to publish him?
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Jeff Borden said on August 20, 2024 at 12:13 pm
Came across a couple of interesting stories about people going great distances for their religion.
1. Russia is offering those fleeing neoliberal policies an easy entry to the country, waiving requirements that immigrants learn Russian and know Russian history. A Christian family of five from New York state accepted the offer and say they feel much safer and secure under Putin. Apparently, fabulist Alex Jones is pushing this, too.
2. Mennonites are finding safety from the modern world in Peru, where their encampments lack electricity, telecom, etc. Unfortunately, they’re also clearing rain forest lands for crops.
I lost my religious faith a long time ago. I don’t know if moving to a dictatorship or jungle to avoid modernity proves their faith us very strong…or very weak.
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Dave said on August 20, 2024 at 12:43 pm
I, too, like Jeff Borden, hate seeing my native state turning so far right and the state I now reside in being so right wing, but being the kind of state that it is, I know I’m never going to see Indiana becoming more reasonable. However, I don’t see myself leaving now at this age, after all, we returned here from another despicable (politically) state, Florida, because of family, and the fact that we personally found Florida not that nice to actually reside in year around. Julie, I’m glad you’re happy there and I understand why but ugh, it wasn’t for us.
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Julie Robinson said on August 20, 2024 at 2:48 pm
Dave, I don’t sense that I’ll live here forever. If our daughter takes a call elsewhere we’ll likely move with her. There are parts of our life where we need help, and she’ll probably never earn enough to have a place of her own. But it certainly won’t happen until after Mom dies, because none of us need the trauma of moving her again.
I was supposed to be working the primary election today, but was relieved of my duties because everyone who signed up was a Democrat, and there has to be one Republican.
The election board noticed this AFTER I sat through three hours of stultifying training. The election board is now being run by a DeSantis toadey with no experience and it shows. Fortunately he is not running in November and we can elect someone competent.
Instead of going to my own precinct two blocks away, they wanted me to drive 25 minutes to the downtown headquarters and wait as a possible substitute. Did I mention I needed to be there at 5:30 am? We only have one vehicle, which will be used to take the ballots back this evening, and even more importantly, I can’t see well enough in the dark to be a safe driver. So I’m at home instead, but I will certainly be serving on November 5.
It’s very sad to see the JG go downhill. I know Julie Inskeep retired and I’m not sure who the publisher is now, but I fear it’s someone from the awful people who bought the N-S and FWN. I have blocked their name from my brain.
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jim said on August 20, 2024 at 3:42 pm
Julie: Sherry Skufca is the publisher of the JG.
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Deborah said on August 20, 2024 at 4:23 pm
The Democrats did something very interesting and probably genius. They invited a lot of social media influencers to be credentialed at the convention and are allowing them to have fabulous experiences that they can then communicate to their followers.
One of the influencers I follow is Design Mom (Gabriele Blair) who lives in France now, she’s a Mormon born and raised in Utah with 6 kids, only one of which is still in high school. She was a design director for Ogilvy, an advertising agency, she’s lived in NYC and San Francisco and she has written an excellent book called “Ejaculate Responsibly” where she explains that unwanted pregnancies are caused by men who aren’t responsible with their ejaculations and that it’s all heaped on women to be responsible for birth control. If people really want to do something about abortion, more attention should be paid to the fact that men are fertile 24/7/365 for many decades or their entire lives, while women are only fertile for a few hours a month for a limited number of years (approx 4 or so decades). It’s much more involved than that, she explains it succinctly. I guarantee that you women out there who read it will find a lot to agree with and you men can learn a lot that you have probably never been taught about your own body and women’s bodies.
Anyway, she’s one of the social media influencers invited to be credentialed. She’s there now, she had to pay for her own travel (from France!) and accommodations, she is thrilled to be included. Her photos and video and captions are super interesting to me, they make me feel like I’m there too.
I think it is a brilliant way to spread the enthusiasm for the event and for the campaign. I don’t think it’s ever been done before. So many people get their information other ways than mainstream media and this takes that into account. I don’t know how many influencers were invited or how many are actually attending since they have to pay their own way. I don’t know what the criteria was for invitations, probably by the number of followers they have on various platforms.
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Sherri said on August 20, 2024 at 4:59 pm
Kamala’s campaign is doing a good job of engaging with ways of reaching people other than through traditional media, because traditional media isn’t all that useful for them. This article gets at why: https://newrepublic.com/article/184990/pundit-brained-media-democratic-convention
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Julie Robinson said on August 20, 2024 at 5:14 pm
Skufca has been at the JG since way back. The corporate financial pressures must be crushing.
I just saw a commercial for a pregnancy test that supposedly is accurate six days before a missed period. Seems like a response to all the six week bans states have been passing.
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Dexter Friend said on August 20, 2024 at 7:15 pm
Our glorious Embassy, and across the street the Jefferson, where I saw “A Clockwork Orange” in June of 1971. My school classmate, the late Elaine Loos, was Jack Loos’s daughter, and Jack was the organist at The War Memorial Coliseum, part-time at The Embassy, and sometimes at restaurants and bars like The Moonraker and Curly Armstrong’s . I lived just west on West Washington after my army days.
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Sherri said on August 20, 2024 at 7:32 pm
I’m shocked that the banks who lent money to Musk for his leveraged buyout of Twitter have been unable to move that debt off their books.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-twitter-deal-may-170135150.html
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