Back to Life!

Dead Walk the Earth

The cover to the today's revived Life magazine -- reborn as a Parade-style newspaper insert -- proclaims, "Sarah Jessica Parker -- SHE'S BACK! (and so are we)". This is why we, as a nation, rely on journalists: I didn't even know Sarah Jessica Parker had gone some place else, since she seems to be as ubiquitous a figure as ever.

It was Life, of course, that sixty years ago, then the photo-essay documenter of the American experience, first showed dead GIs in its pages. It was a sobering reminder of the cost of war, a stunning cold water wake-up that the conflict was real.

Today, of course, in the wake of the Iraq war, we share a few intimate moments with Mrs. Broderick.

This great feature, however, deserves further reporting: "Supreme Court Justices: Just Like Us!"

Unironically, Life reports the following factoidy vignettelets:

"The highest court in the land is acctually the basketball court on the fourt floor of the Court building. Nearby is the exercise room where JUSTICE SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR attends the women's-only aerobics class that she organized."

"The justices' leather chairs, which have naemplates, come equippped with an antique porcelain spitoon (now used as a wastebasket), matching inkwells, and cough drops. Luden's, anyone?"

"With borrowing privileges from D.C. museums, the justices can request great works of art for their offices the way you order purple Post-it notes. The Rothko (left) in JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG's office is on loan from the National Gallery of Art."

"Church and state be damned! Humbug to anyone who says there's something slightly unconstitutional in CHIEF JUSTICE WILLIAM H. REHNQUIST's Yuletide tradition. He leads the Court's employees and their guests in such carols as "Silent Night" and "The First Noel" at the annual Christmas Party."

You'll have to excuse me, now. After I spit into my porcelain spitoon, I have to oversee the delivery of the Picasso on loan to me from the Hirshhorn, which I'm putting up in my private basketball court -- just like the Supreme Court!

What a wonderful egalitarian democracy we live in, with such a great fifth estate to keep everything running on the grease of information.