/// Weekeend by: Vic Matus ............................................: From seeking one kind of justice to another, new Weekend Beacon contributor Mike Fragoso reviews Revenge for the Sixties: Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement by Peter S. Canellos. https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!em8Y!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb184630b-a387-4177-b46b-aead63d6fa1a_695x491.jpeg “How Canellos tells the Alito origin story—axe-grinding aside—is interesting. He goes through the history of the Italian-American community near Trenton, New Jersey, with some care, tracing the Alito family roots from the Italian ghetto of Chambersburg with its tenements and heavy manufacturing, to the all-American suburb of Hamilton with its single-family houses and upward mobility. Alito’s time at Steinert High School is given due psychological weight for the later justice, in particular his time on the debate team and school newspaper.” “Alito’s long-1950s idyll of Hamilton, however, soon gave way to the most chaotic stretch of time in the history of Princeton University, which he attended. Canellos recounts Alito’s comments during his confirmation hearing that what he saw at Princeton was ‘very smart people and very privileged people behaving irresponsibly.’ To understand what he meant, we are presented with a relatively quiet, extremely studious outsider in the Ivy League who just wanted to be left alone to get ahead being consistently confronted by the mobs of hippies and terrorists (yes, terrorists—they bombed the ROTC) around him.” “During his recounting of Alito’s youth ... and his development as a lawyer, Canellos intersperses the legal developments of the liberal-activist Warren Court. His gloss on the Warren Court is standard-fare liberal, though. Its critics get their summarized say on why it was bad, but who knows whether the Warren Court was popular or activist? (It wasn’t; it was.) “It was the Warren Court and the rampant crime it facilitated that accelerated the flight of the Italians from Trenton to Hamilton. As Canellos does note, it was the Warren Court that prevented Alito’s mother from using Bible verses in class as a teacher and that kept his father up at night figuring out the boundaries of new legislative districts. It was the Warren Court that authorized the lawless protests of the 1960s. There is a direct connection between the chaos of the ‘60s that shook Alito and the core problem the conservative legal movement was designed to address.” On a much lighter note, John Podhoretz reviews Tuner, the best movie he’s seen this year. https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!53Vw!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F88b59b18-69f5-4c11-a8bb-ed527e4f2a2b_695x491.jpeg “It begins as a shaggy-dog story about a withdrawn young man and his grandfatherly boss who work as piano tuners in New York. They are viewed with such little regard for their very particular skill that the people who hire them also demand they fix the toilet and reset the router. The young man is played by the British actor Leo Woodall, who manages to hold the screen even though his character, Niki White, doesn’t talk or interact very much—for reasons that are finally explained in an extraordinarily moving monologue near the climax. His silence is more than made up for by the garrulous and tender Harry Horowitz, a jazz musician of real repute who uses piano tuning to keep a roof over his head. Harry is played by the 88-year-old Dustin Hoffman in the loveliest performance of his career and one that will likely be remembered during awards season. “The cowriter and director, Daniel Roher, makes this part of Tuner seem utterly lived in. The two men love and annoy each other, and they are deadly serious about their work. Niki has a condition called ‘hyperacusis’ that makes any loud sound a torment to him; he says he has an allergy to noise. So a job that demands he be able to hear the tiniest changes in pitch is perfect for him. And that skill, it seems, also comes in handy if you have to open a combination safe. Niki teaches himself how to do it one night by watching YouTube videos. “And then, in a house visit to a New Jersey mansion where Billy Joel is to play the piano at a benefit the following night, he encounters a security team installing new equipment—and robbing the place at the same time. They’re led by the charming and garrulous Uri—he is played by Lior Raz, the co-creator and star of Fauda. Niki needs money; he’s developed this safecracking skill; and Uri explains to him that the people he steals from are so rich they don’t ever miss what is taken from them. ... As in all movies about naïfs who back into a life of crime, things go wonderfully for a while and then start to go very, very wrong.” HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND X: @AndrewStilesUSA Email: stiles@freebeacon.com If you have friends, tell them to subscribe to the Stiles Section newsletter. Send them here. 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