Any time interpretation is involved (which really means: any time a human being gets involved in anything), there is the opportunity for our best and most beautiful qualities to inflect the material we are interpreting—but there is equally the opportunity for our cynicism, our racism, and our little hatreds and bigotries to be exercised through the application of laws that are at the end of the day inert tools that must be wielded by someone to construct a more or less merciful
