Stuff

This is why I should have been a judge.

Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, was recently sued in British court by authors of 1982 book called Holy Blood, Holy Grail. They claimed violation of copyright based on supposed similarities between the books. They lost. Not just that, the judge all but mocked the claimants in his ruling. But that's not all. Apparently, he also put a code in his decision.

I for one hope that the judge's code points out that if Dan Brown is guilty from stealing from anyone it's from himself - he's now written pretty much the same damn book four times over.

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Elsewhere in the seemy world of literary scandal, we have proof that just because you go to Harvard doesn't mean you have a brain in your head.

What's more offensive here? How completely blatant the plagiarism was or that she chose to plagiarize a book by Megan McCafferty. I mean, really, if you absolutely have to steal to finish your book, steal something better.

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Finally, it's no Sopranos, but Big Love on HBO is certainly an intriguing show.

Is the show for or against the practic of polygamy?

It's hard to say. The objectivist argument that the show makes (if only implicitly) is essentially: Assuming you, like a majority of Americans now, support gay or non-traditional marriage on the grounds that consenting adults should be able to enter into arrangements of their choosing and not ultimately be dictated morality by the state, then why can't more than two consenting adults enter into a similar arrangement?

It is a tempting and probably convincing argument that the show seems to be promoting: Bill Hendrickson and his three wives fiercely insist that they are happy and living the life they chose.

The show also (creepily) portrays the most logical and common argument against polygamy: That, in reality, most plural marriages are not the result of choice but are the prodcut of cult-like indoctrination. To that end, the show gives us the Juniper Creek "compiund," which is for all intents and purposes Colorado City, the now relatively famous polygamist society in Arizona near the Utah border. Here one man (a self-proclaimed "prophet") essentially runs everything and has many wives, some of them distressingly young teenagers. The whole thing is both convincing and beyond unsettling.

But where the show is really succeeding is in showing the great extent to which even the Hendrickson's willing, big-city four-way marriage isn't really working. The problem, of course, is jealousy. (An excellent article on the ways jealousy is tearing the group apart is here at Slate.)

It's sad to watch the Juniper Creek scenes, but the scenes at the Hendrickson's are frustrating to watch in their own way. It all seems like it should work out -- one can even imagine how it might be fun to be one of the wives (the fun part of being the husband is, I should think, obvious). Except despite all the potential upside their home life is filled with problem after problem after problem. And realistic issues, too, it's not all completely manufactured TV "problems."

More and more, it seems, the real question the show is asking isn't whether or not we should allow polygamy but why anyone would want to be a polygamist in the first place.

Oh, and also, how often can we show Bill paxton's ass before everyone stops watching altogether?