October 12, 2018
This is what I've been waiting for: a full transcript of Kanye West's Oval Office monologue.
Here it is (at New York Magazine). I needed it in writing, because it's such an overload when he's speaking. Some highlights:
You know, people expect that if you’re black you have to be Democrat... You know they tried to scare me to not wear this hat, my own friends, but this hat, it gives me power in a way.... [W]hen I put this hat on, it made me feel like Superman. You made us Superman, that’s my favorite superhero, and you made a Superman cape for me.... So, I had the balls, because I have enough balls to put on this hat.... I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I was connected with a neuropsychologist that works with the athletes in the NBA and NFL. He looked at my brain, it’s equal on three parts. I’m gonna go ahead, drop some bombs for you. 98 percentile IQ test, I had a 75 percentile of all human beings when it was counting eight numbers backwards, so I’m gonna work on that one. The other ones, 98 percent, Tesla, Freud. So, he said that I actually wasn’t bipolar, I had sleep deprivation, which could cause dementia 10-20 years from now, where I wouldn’t even remember my sons name. So, all this power that I’ve got, and I’m taking my son to the Sox game and all that, I wouldn’t be able to remember his name, from a misdiagnosis. What we need is, we can empower the pharmaceuticals and make more money... we can empower our factories.... And one of the things we gotta set is, Ford to have the highest designs. The dopest cars. The most amazing. I don’t really say, “dope,” I don’t say negative words and try to flip ‘em. We just say positive, lovely, divine, universal words. So, the flyest, freshest, most amazing car. And what we start with, is – I brought a GIF with me right here. [Scrolls through iPhone to show Trump.] This right here is the iPlane 1. It’s a hydrogen powered airplane, and this is what our president should be flying in.....
"I don’t read reviews. Many writers say this, and they’re lying — but I’m not lying."
"My wife reads every review, though, and she only reads the bad ones out loud to me. She says I have to accept bad reviews. The good reviews, forget it."
Says Haruki Murakami, interviewed at the NYT on the occasion of the release of his new book "Killing Commendatore."
I'm in the middle of reading it. Are you?
Says Haruki Murakami, interviewed at the NYT on the occasion of the release of his new book "Killing Commendatore."
I'm in the middle of reading it. Are you?
You have said that “Killing Commendatore” is a homage to “The Great Gatsby,” a novel that, as it happens, you translated into Japanese about ten years ago. “Gatsby” can be read as a tragic tale about the limits of the American dream. How did this work in your new book?In the interview, Murakami says he originally wrote the first "one or two paragraphs," then put it in a drawer and waited until he got the idea that he could write it. The first 2 paragraphs are:
“The Great Gatsby” is my favorite book. I read it when I was 17 or 18, out of school, and was impressed by the story because it’s a book about a dream — and how people behave when the dream is broken. This is a very important theme for me. I don’t think of it as necessarily the American dream, but rather a young man’s dream, a dream in general.
Today when I awoke from a nap the faceless man was there before me. He was seated on the chair across from the sofa I’d been sleeping on, staring straight at me with a pair of imaginary eyes in a face that wasn’t.The way to continue is that the man without a face asks the narrator to paint his portrait, and the narrator, we learn, is an artist who paints portraits, but only because it was a way to make a living, and what he really wants is to paint abstracts.
The man was tall, and he was dressed the same as when I had seen him last. His face-that-wasn’t-a-face was half hidden by a wide-brimmed black hat, and he had on a long, equally dark coat.
A new political costume? A sad-faced girl with 2 bruised eyes, imploring us to vote to save her from further violence?
That's what I wondered, when I opened my email and saw this (click to enlarge and sharpen):
Maybe that's supposed to just be a pretty way to do your eyes — all purple, with glitter.
Decades ago, it was a cliché of feminist critique to say that eye shadow looked like 2 bruised black eyes so if you think it's attractive, what you are finding attractive is the violent subordination of women. Despite the mass quantities of feminist critique on line these days, I can't find anyone saying that.
So what's going on with that girl's eyes? (I'm saying girl because she looks about 12.)
Is it a deliberate effort to look as though she's been punched in the face a couple times? If so, it's not like in the old feminist critique, a misguided effort to look sexy by looking like a beaten-up victim, but a misguided effort to lend credibility to a message that — because violence against women is bad — you ought to vote (presumably for a candidate that cares about women's rights).
I expect many of you to say I'm going too far. She's just supposed to look like a cool young rock music fan.
AND: I am reminded of last week's New Yorker cover, which used lipstick to represent violence against women:
The woman with the dulled eyes has what seems to be a lipsticked mouth, but it's a hand. She's being silenced... by her own makeup. The New Yorker's art editor, Françoise Mouly, explains that the cover, by Ana Juan, is commentary on the Kavanaugh hearings.
IN THE COMMENTS: Commenter BJK says that the person I called a girl is in fact a 31-year-old woman, Lauren Mayberry and that she's the lead singer of CHVRCHES, one of the groups listed in the email I received. Here, you might enjoy her music:
Maybe that's supposed to just be a pretty way to do your eyes — all purple, with glitter.
Decades ago, it was a cliché of feminist critique to say that eye shadow looked like 2 bruised black eyes so if you think it's attractive, what you are finding attractive is the violent subordination of women. Despite the mass quantities of feminist critique on line these days, I can't find anyone saying that.
So what's going on with that girl's eyes? (I'm saying girl because she looks about 12.)
Is it a deliberate effort to look as though she's been punched in the face a couple times? If so, it's not like in the old feminist critique, a misguided effort to look sexy by looking like a beaten-up victim, but a misguided effort to lend credibility to a message that — because violence against women is bad — you ought to vote (presumably for a candidate that cares about women's rights).
I expect many of you to say I'm going too far. She's just supposed to look like a cool young rock music fan.
AND: I am reminded of last week's New Yorker cover, which used lipstick to represent violence against women:
The woman with the dulled eyes has what seems to be a lipsticked mouth, but it's a hand. She's being silenced... by her own makeup. The New Yorker's art editor, Françoise Mouly, explains that the cover, by Ana Juan, is commentary on the Kavanaugh hearings.
IN THE COMMENTS: Commenter BJK says that the person I called a girl is in fact a 31-year-old woman, Lauren Mayberry and that she's the lead singer of CHVRCHES, one of the groups listed in the email I received. Here, you might enjoy her music:
Tennessee Senatorial candidate Phil Bredeson promotes that endorsement he got from Taylor Swift.
Here's the ad:
I think that works more as an anti-Taylor Swift ad. Is that her music in any way? It was horrible! CNN reports:
And if the sheer badness of that appropriation of her music and her once-politics-free image were not enough, the new NYT/Siena poll has support for Blackburn suddenly up by 14 points!
I think that works more as an anti-Taylor Swift ad. Is that her music in any way? It was horrible! CNN reports:
In a video, simply titled "Taylor Swift," Bredesen's campaign cribs Swift's song, "Look What You Made Me Do" with a slate aimed at his opponent, Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, that reads, "Look What Marsha Made Her Do." The video then proceeds to clip together news coverage of Swift's unexpected endorsement, with reporters repeatedly noting the move is "out of the norm" for Swift.Wow. So that was Taylor Swift music?! Here's the original, which seems kind of okay, maybe because we get to look at the lovely young woman (and not that Harry-Morgan-looking guy):
And if the sheer badness of that appropriation of her music and her once-politics-free image were not enough, the new NYT/Siena poll has support for Blackburn suddenly up by 14 points!
"Watching hours of Trump at his rallies, it’s easy to sympathize with the desire to ignore them."
"John Dean tweeted a picture of the crowd waiting in line for the Erie rally and derided it as a 'meaningless show.' For supporters, it’s hyperbole, just rhetoric, entertainment, part of the unvarnished appeal; for opponents, it’s old news painful to watch, maybe, but inconsequential, narrow-casting to his base... But what the President of the United States is actually saying is extraordinary... It’s not just the whoppers or the particular outrage riffs.... It’s the hate, and the sense of actual menace that the President is trying to convey to his supporters. Democrats aren’t just wrong in the manner of traditional partisan differences; they are scary, bad, evil, radical, dangerous. Trump and Trump alone stands between his audiences and disaster. I listen because I think we are making a mistake by dismissing him, by pretending the words of the most powerful man in the world are meaningless...."
From "I Listened to All Six Trump Rallies in October. You Should, Too/It’s not a reality show. It’s real" — by Susan B. Glasser in The New Yorker.
I was just inquiring into who's properly characterized as "exhausted." Supposedly, according to "Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape," it's everybody but the progressive activists, the traditional conservatives, and the devoted conservatives.
But that New Yorker writer sounds powerfully exhausted and she's talking to New Yorker readers who she presumes are exhausted.
By the way, I had to laugh at the line "Democrats aren’t just wrong in the manner of traditional partisan differences; they are scary, bad, evil, radical, dangerous." Glasser is disparaging Trump for saying that. She's paraphrasing. But you could just as well paraphrase the message from Democrats as: Republicans are not just wrong in the manner of traditional partisan differences; they are scary, bad, evil, radical, dangerous. Glasser acts appalled by "the sense of actual menace" that Trump supposedly is "trying to convey to" his audience, but Glasser seems to be trying to convey a sense of actual menace to hers.
I would be exhausted if I were not amused.
From "I Listened to All Six Trump Rallies in October. You Should, Too/It’s not a reality show. It’s real" — by Susan B. Glasser in The New Yorker.
I was just inquiring into who's properly characterized as "exhausted." Supposedly, according to "Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape," it's everybody but the progressive activists, the traditional conservatives, and the devoted conservatives.
But that New Yorker writer sounds powerfully exhausted and she's talking to New Yorker readers who she presumes are exhausted.
By the way, I had to laugh at the line "Democrats aren’t just wrong in the manner of traditional partisan differences; they are scary, bad, evil, radical, dangerous." Glasser is disparaging Trump for saying that. She's paraphrasing. But you could just as well paraphrase the message from Democrats as: Republicans are not just wrong in the manner of traditional partisan differences; they are scary, bad, evil, radical, dangerous. Glasser acts appalled by "the sense of actual menace" that Trump supposedly is "trying to convey to" his audience, but Glasser seems to be trying to convey a sense of actual menace to hers.
I would be exhausted if I were not amused.
I'm hearing about the "exhausted majority." Is that something different from the old "silent majority"?
A lot of people — including me, here, yesterday — are linking to the Atlantic article, "Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture" by Yascha Mounk.
I usually give the subtitle along with the title, but this article has a distractingly incomprehensible subtitle: "Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness, and race isn’t either." I mean, I can comprehend it now that I've read the article, but unlike most subtitles, it doesn't help you see what you're going to get by reading it. The use of the word "proxy" is, if not entirely wrong, entirely confusing. The idea is supposed to be that you're wrong if you assume that the older and whiter a person is there more likely they are to think "political correctness" is a problem. It turns out that all groups — except "progressive activists" — say they think "political correctness" is a problem. And the majorities are overwhelming.
The article draws from a new report, "Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape,” which sorts Americans into various political "tribes." This depiction is a good quick summary:
Look at how many people are collected under the label "exhausted"! Obviously, we're a huge majority, and it's nice to see all the detail within the majority, but why are we all labeled "exhausted"? And why are "traditional liberals" said to be exhausted when "traditional conservatives" are not? The Atlantic article says that the views of the "traditional" and the "devoted" conservatives "are far outside the American mainstream." I guess the "traditional liberals," unlike the "traditional conservatives," don't belong in the "wings," and therefore get grouped with the "majority." But why is that entire diverse group, the majority, deemed "exhausted"?
To go to the underlying report:
Here's the Wikipedia article for "Silent Majority":
I usually give the subtitle along with the title, but this article has a distractingly incomprehensible subtitle: "Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness, and race isn’t either." I mean, I can comprehend it now that I've read the article, but unlike most subtitles, it doesn't help you see what you're going to get by reading it. The use of the word "proxy" is, if not entirely wrong, entirely confusing. The idea is supposed to be that you're wrong if you assume that the older and whiter a person is there more likely they are to think "political correctness" is a problem. It turns out that all groups — except "progressive activists" — say they think "political correctness" is a problem. And the majorities are overwhelming.
The article draws from a new report, "Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape,” which sorts Americans into various political "tribes." This depiction is a good quick summary:
Look at how many people are collected under the label "exhausted"! Obviously, we're a huge majority, and it's nice to see all the detail within the majority, but why are we all labeled "exhausted"? And why are "traditional liberals" said to be exhausted when "traditional conservatives" are not? The Atlantic article says that the views of the "traditional" and the "devoted" conservatives "are far outside the American mainstream." I guess the "traditional liberals," unlike the "traditional conservatives," don't belong in the "wings," and therefore get grouped with the "majority." But why is that entire diverse group, the majority, deemed "exhausted"?
To go to the underlying report:
In talking to everyday Americans, we have found a large segment of the population whose voices are rarely heard above the shouts of the partisan tribes. These are people who believe that Americans have more in common than that which divides them. While they differ on important issues, they feel exhausted by the division in the United States. They believe that compromise is necessary in politics, as in other parts of life, and want to see the country come together and solve its problems.Is this group really tired or just hard to hear "above the shouts of the partisan tribes"? I suspect that the authors are using the term "exhausted majority" because they don't want to say "silent majority."
Here's the Wikipedia article for "Silent Majority":
"We were at home in Salt Lake City in when I tweeted — at 2:11 a.m. — I just woke up and had this thought in my head: Oh, my God, this is going to make so much sense."
"And then I tweeted it and then I went right back to sleep. And when I woke up at 7, the shit had hit the fan."
It was one of those things, she says, where you "just want to get it down," and you'll "expand on this later."
Why would anyone think your iPad Twitter app should be your bedside notepad? It's an especially bad choice if you go to sleep on a mind-altering drug. Roseanne says she used Ambien. Drug or no drug, it's possible to jot down a note in the middle of the night that even you can't understand the next morning or that you understand but realize in your wide-awake clarity is a bad idea or an idea you don't want to use in your public presentation of yourself. That's why a paper note pad is a classic bedside table item.
But Roseanne's public presentation was someone who would blurt out things that could sound crazy, and that is something that works on Twitter. You score with retweets. Was the 2 a.m. thought, "Oh, my God, this is going to make so much sense" or was it something more like: "This is so weird, I'll make them go nuts trying to figure out what this means"?
ADDED: You can listen to the entire 2+ hour long podcast here. And let me give you another clip, in which Roseanne expresses her sadness and anger that the network would take an artist's work away from her. The show represented 30 years of her work, drawn from her life and the Conner family is her real-life family. She had legal rights in the show, but she signed them away, she said because she'd have been a "hypocrite" to have cared about "labor rights" for so long and then, by not signing off, be responsible for 200 people losing their job.
It was one of those things, she says, where you "just want to get it down," and you'll "expand on this later."
Why would anyone think your iPad Twitter app should be your bedside notepad? It's an especially bad choice if you go to sleep on a mind-altering drug. Roseanne says she used Ambien. Drug or no drug, it's possible to jot down a note in the middle of the night that even you can't understand the next morning or that you understand but realize in your wide-awake clarity is a bad idea or an idea you don't want to use in your public presentation of yourself. That's why a paper note pad is a classic bedside table item.
But Roseanne's public presentation was someone who would blurt out things that could sound crazy, and that is something that works on Twitter. You score with retweets. Was the 2 a.m. thought, "Oh, my God, this is going to make so much sense" or was it something more like: "This is so weird, I'll make them go nuts trying to figure out what this means"?
ADDED: You can listen to the entire 2+ hour long podcast here. And let me give you another clip, in which Roseanne expresses her sadness and anger that the network would take an artist's work away from her. The show represented 30 years of her work, drawn from her life and the Conner family is her real-life family. She had legal rights in the show, but she signed them away, she said because she'd have been a "hypocrite" to have cared about "labor rights" for so long and then, by not signing off, be responsible for 200 people losing their job.
"Mom, I really didn’t do this, but I’ll see you in two years instead of 20 if I sign. And everyone here believes her, uncritically."
Imagined dialogue, the last line of "I believe in Me Too, but I believe no one uncritically" by Marc John Radazza in the ABA Journal.
October 11, 2018
At the First Frost Café...
... you can warm up inside.
It's going down to 29° tonight — and it was almost 80° a couple days ago — so it was the day Meade dragged the big avocado tree inside. He dismantled all the ferns too. It looks so empty out there now!
"We are now one step closer to same-sex reproduction: Scientists in China have produced healthy offspring from two mother mice."
Reports Sixth Tone.
While it is possible for some reptiles, amphibians, and fish to reproduce without two parents of the opposite sex, achieving this in mammals has proved challenging even with fertilization technology.... But for the CAS researchers, 210 embryos made from the DNA of two mothers yielded 29 live mice.
“We were interested in the question of why mammals can only undergo sexual reproduction,” co-senior author Zhou Qi was quoted as saying in the press release. “So we tried to find out whether more normal mice with two female parents, or even mice with two male parents, could be produced using haploid embryonic stem cells.”
"When we greenlit The Conners we thought that the public would tune in to see the family return but what we've discovered is that people want Roseanne — they don't want the family by themselves."
"The marketing and publicity teams are horrified as no matter what promotional material is released — and let's be honest it's been limited for a show that launches next Tuesday — Roseanne's fans come out in force stating that they won't watch the show. The comments on social media tend to skew in favor of Roseanne and slam The Conners and the cast members who came back. Even dedicated fans of the Conner family feel conflicted about supporting a show that so swiftly eliminated the show's matriarch and creator."
From "EXCLUSIVE: 'People want Roseanne!' ABC execs fear spin-off show The Conners will crash without its fired star when it debuts next week and tell DailyMailTV killing off her character was a hasty 'knee-jerk' decision" (The Daily Mail).
ADDED: I suspect that the execs are angling to bring Roseanne back. I heard that they were going to begin the new show with the news that Roseanne had died, but the first episode hasn't aired yet, and it might be easy to edit the story into just having her away in the hospital, struggling but not yet dead, and then bring her back — the character and the celebrity. I think most Americans these days — especially the subset that watched "Roseanne" — want to see somebody in trouble fight back. Look at Brett Kavanaugh. Trump didn't abandon him, and he didn't apologize and disappear. It's just not a good story going forward if they killed off Roseanne and took the easy way out. The Conner family is about struggling through adversity and sticking together. It's completely incoherent to throw the mother away because she said one bad thing. And an awful lot of people think she was punished not for saying that one bad thing but for liking Trump. A lot of TV-watchers like Trump.
AND: I've been meaning to get around to posting this: "Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture" (The Atlantic). 79% of white people think political correctness is a problem, and the opposition to political correctness is even stronger among Asian-Americans (82%), Hispanics-Americans (87%), and American Indians (88%). Among racial groups, African-Americans are the most supportive of political correctness, but still, 75% are opposed. The only group that supported political correctness was "progressive activists," but even in that group 30% thought it's a problem.
From "EXCLUSIVE: 'People want Roseanne!' ABC execs fear spin-off show The Conners will crash without its fired star when it debuts next week and tell DailyMailTV killing off her character was a hasty 'knee-jerk' decision" (The Daily Mail).
ADDED: I suspect that the execs are angling to bring Roseanne back. I heard that they were going to begin the new show with the news that Roseanne had died, but the first episode hasn't aired yet, and it might be easy to edit the story into just having her away in the hospital, struggling but not yet dead, and then bring her back — the character and the celebrity. I think most Americans these days — especially the subset that watched "Roseanne" — want to see somebody in trouble fight back. Look at Brett Kavanaugh. Trump didn't abandon him, and he didn't apologize and disappear. It's just not a good story going forward if they killed off Roseanne and took the easy way out. The Conner family is about struggling through adversity and sticking together. It's completely incoherent to throw the mother away because she said one bad thing. And an awful lot of people think she was punished not for saying that one bad thing but for liking Trump. A lot of TV-watchers like Trump.
AND: I've been meaning to get around to posting this: "Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture" (The Atlantic). 79% of white people think political correctness is a problem, and the opposition to political correctness is even stronger among Asian-Americans (82%), Hispanics-Americans (87%), and American Indians (88%). Among racial groups, African-Americans are the most supportive of political correctness, but still, 75% are opposed. The only group that supported political correctness was "progressive activists," but even in that group 30% thought it's a problem.
"Just hours before the curtain was to go up, Shorewood High School has canceled its production of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' in response to a planned protest over its use of the n-word."
"News of a planned protest had circulated on social media early Thursday. And by early afternoon, Superintendent Bryan Davis pulled the plug, saying the district should have done a better job engaging the community 'about the sensitivity of this performance. We’ve concluded that the safest option is to cancel the play,' Davis said in a statement."
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
Imagine letting students learn all the lines of a play, rehearse their parts, get all nervous and excited about the performance and then just cancelling it on them — cancelling it on them not because of anything they did wrong or anything that was wrong but because other people talked about protesting it. What kind of lesson is the school teaching?! What's the point of working hard and doing something worthwhile that you believe in and build with other people if the authorities won't support you but will take the "safest option" and side with the people who see an opportunity for protest and disruption.
I see the protesters don't like the "n-word" in the show.It would be so easy to modify the script to take out one word. But I guess cancelling is the "safest" thing to do. It's practically telling the students who worked peaceably on their theater project that they should be less well-behaved, so that ruining their work won't seem "safe."
"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what." - Atticus Finch.
ADDED: I have drawn a line through one sentence because I now believe the licensing agreement forbids making any change to the script. My son John linked to this post at Facebook, and someone there made that point. My response there:
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
Imagine letting students learn all the lines of a play, rehearse their parts, get all nervous and excited about the performance and then just cancelling it on them — cancelling it on them not because of anything they did wrong or anything that was wrong but because other people talked about protesting it. What kind of lesson is the school teaching?! What's the point of working hard and doing something worthwhile that you believe in and build with other people if the authorities won't support you but will take the "safest option" and side with the people who see an opportunity for protest and disruption.
I see the protesters don't like the "n-word" in the show.
***
"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what." - Atticus Finch.
ADDED: I have drawn a line through one sentence because I now believe the licensing agreement forbids making any change to the script. My son John linked to this post at Facebook, and someone there made that point. My response there:
I'm sorry if my blog post makes it seem as though my first choice is to take out the word or if anyone thinks I'd support the cancellation if the word could not be taken out. I think the school authorities saw fit to make that play the one the students should do and the students committed a lot of work and dedication to a project in reliance on the school's choice. It is a terrible betrayal of the students who trusted the school. I was in school plays in high school, and I remember how deeply emotionally important they become to the students. Here's a play with very serious subject matter, and the subject is specifically courage in the face of ignorant opposition.
"You know, they tried to scare me to not wear this hat—my own friends. But it’s hot! It gives me, it gives me power in a way. "
"You know, my dad and my mom separated, so I didn’t have a lot of male energy in my home. And also, I’m married to a family that, you know, not a lot of male energy going on. It’s beautiful though! But there’s times where, you know, it’s something about—I love Hillary. I love everyone, right? But the campaign, 'I’m With Her,' just didn’t make me feel, as a guy that didn’t get to see my dad all the time, like a guy that could play catch with his son. There was something about, when I put this hat on, it made me feel like Superman. You made a Superman—that’s my favorite super hero. You made a Superman cape for me, also, as a guy who looks up to you … looks up to American industry guys, nonpolitical, no bullshit—put the beep on it—however you wanna do it, five second delay…"
Said Kanye West, talking to Donald Trump today. I got the transcription from "Inside The Historic Trump-Kanye Oval Office Summit" (New York Magazine). You can watch 24+ minutes of Trump and Kanye and Jim Brown, here:
ADDED: Kanye hugs Trump and tells him he loves him:
Said Kanye West, talking to Donald Trump today. I got the transcription from "Inside The Historic Trump-Kanye Oval Office Summit" (New York Magazine). You can watch 24+ minutes of Trump and Kanye and Jim Brown, here:
ADDED: Kanye hugs Trump and tells him he loves him:
Kanye West with President Trump in Oval Office: "I love this guy right here." pic.twitter.com/40Q24j5fRJ
— CSPAN (@cspan) October 11, 2018
What if your child's teacher thought this about your son: "He was a loner and isolated and off by himself all the time"?
Teachers want us to believe that they love children and care for and support them. They have — through the compulsion of the state — the opportunity to observe them and interact with them for long hours and many days in their formative years. To trust teachers in that role, we need to believe that if they saw that our child was a loner and isolated and off by himself all the time, their heart would go out to our poor little child, and they'd talk with us and try to help. Or maybe we would wonder whether the teacher understands psychological diversity. Why is she tagging our child as "a loner" rather than appreciating the introvert or trying to figure out if there's some unseen burden making the child withdrawn? The teacher shouldn't be like another one of the children, who decide that a kid is a weirdo and shun him. But imagine a teacher who remembers the children she thought about as a weirdo, waited decades, and when that fellow human being achieved some success in his adult life, she wrote a newspaper column to tell the world "He was a loner and isolated and off by himself all the time."
This is Nikki Fiske, Stephen Miller's Third-Grade Teacher. Stephen Miller is a Trump political adviser. Maybe Nikki Fiske was lured into "writing" this article. I put "writing" in quotes because the byline is "Nikki Fiske, as told to Benjamin Svetkey." I hope she's dreadfully sorry at her terrible breach of a teacher's moral responsibility toward a child. I was a teacher for more than 30 years, and my students were all adults, but I have never — in all the tens of thousands of blog posts I've dashed off and published impulsively — even considered naming one of my students and saying something negative I thought I observed about their personality.
I googled the line "He was a loner and isolated and off by himself all the time" and not everything that came up was about Nikki Fiske and Stephen Miller. There was also:
1. "The Badass Personalities of People Who Like Being Alone/Four studies shatter stereotypes of people who like to be alone" by Bella DePaulo (Psychology Today).
This is Nikki Fiske, Stephen Miller's Third-Grade Teacher. Stephen Miller is a Trump political adviser. Maybe Nikki Fiske was lured into "writing" this article. I put "writing" in quotes because the byline is "Nikki Fiske, as told to Benjamin Svetkey." I hope she's dreadfully sorry at her terrible breach of a teacher's moral responsibility toward a child. I was a teacher for more than 30 years, and my students were all adults, but I have never — in all the tens of thousands of blog posts I've dashed off and published impulsively — even considered naming one of my students and saying something negative I thought I observed about their personality.
I googled the line "He was a loner and isolated and off by himself all the time" and not everything that came up was about Nikki Fiske and Stephen Miller. There was also:
1. "The Badass Personalities of People Who Like Being Alone/Four studies shatter stereotypes of people who like to be alone" by Bella DePaulo (Psychology Today).
True loners are people who embrace their alone time.... If our stereotypes about people who like being alone were true, then we should find that they are neurotic and closed-minded. In fact, just the opposite is true: People who like spending time alone, and who are unafraid of being single, are especially unlikely to be neurotic. They are not the tense, moody, worrying types.2. "The Lethality of Loneliness/We now know how it can ravage our body and brain" by Judith Shulevitz (New Republic).
“Real loneliness”... is not what the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard characterized as the “shut-upness” and solitariness of the civilized. Nor is “real loneliness” the happy solitude of the productive artist or the passing irritation of being cooped up with the flu while all your friends go off on some adventure. It’s not being dissatisfied with your companion of the moment—your friend or lover or even spouse— unless you chronically find yourself in that situation, in which case you may in fact be a lonely person.... Loneliness... is the want of intimacy.3. "The Virtues of Isolation/Under the right circumstances, choosing to spend time alone can be a huge psychological boon" by Brent Crane (The Atlantic):
And even though many great thinkers have championed the intellectual and spiritual benefits of solitude–Lao Tzu, Moses, Nietzsche, Emerson, Woolf (“How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table”)– many modern humans seem hell-bent on avoiding it....4. "Why do some people become loners? What type of people become loners? What are the advantages of being a loner?" by Anonymous (Quora):
Generally, [Matthew Bowker, a psychoanalytic political theorist] contends that our “mistrust of solitude” has consequences. For one, “we’ve become a more groupish society,” he says.... “We’re drawn to identity-markers and to groups that help us define [ourselves]. In the simplest terms, this means using others to fill out our identities, rather than relying on something internal, something that comes from within,” Bowker says. “Separating from the group, I would argue, is one thing that universities should be facilitating more.”
I don’t really have any big hopes for future. At least I am glad I live in North America where loners are somewhat accepted by the society. I used to blame my parents a lot for being this way. I used to be very angry, especially at my father. There is a saying “You become like the people you resent to”. I think it’s happening. My father is a loner too. The difference is that he belongs to a different generation. He was able to build a family and his own family is big. He is a loner at heart who never had a chance of actually becoming one. Now he is in his 60s and my mother complains that he has no friends to spend time with so he is bored all the time.5. "Depression is a disease of loneliness/A lack of friends can suck someone into solitude – sharing the language of affection could help to ease the pain" by Andrew Solomon (The Guardian):
It would be arrogant for people with friends to pity those without. Some friendless people may be close to their parents or children rather than to extrafamilial friends, or they may be more interested in things or ideas than in other people....
Many people, however, are desperate for love, but don’t know how to go about finding it, disabled by depression’s tidal pull toward seclusion....
For some, friendship has become a vocabulary as obscure as Sanskrit. Lack of emotional fluency may cause depression; it may exacerbate it; it may cast a shadow over recovery. But there are ways to help people who want friendships to learn the language of affection. Parents and schools can teach children productive ways to engage....
"Michelle always says, 'When they go low, we go high.' No. No. When they go low, we kick them."
Said Eric Holder, quoted at WaPo in "'When they go low, we kick them': How Michelle Obama’s maxim morphed to fit angry and divided times." Morphed? It's not some kind of updating or evolution. It's the opposite. The only coherence comes from understanding that calls for civility are always bullshit — just a con to get the other side to stand down, because when you think incivility suits your interests, suddenly it's a good thing.
The WaPo article also has the new Hillary Clinton quote (which we talked about yesterday here): "You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about."
It doesn't have the second part of her quote — "That's why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that's when civility can start again" — which I credit for its humorous frankness. It's what I've been saying for years under my "civility bullshit" tag. In that view, Michelle's "When they go low, we go high" never meant we're lofty and principled and stick to our values, but that the idea we're high and they're low is effective rhetoric.
I suspect going high would have been more effective in 2018 than crazy-sounding combativeness, but in choosing a tactic, you're always at risk of being wrong. If you're principled and do what's right as an end in itself, then if it turns out not to get you want you want, you still have your honor. No one needs to follow you. No one needs to believe in you. But I don't think you are in politics. That's why I say calls for civility are always bullshit.
Combativeness isn't a new idea for Democrats, of course. Michelle Obama's line is memorable, but so is "If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard" (spoken by Obama's deputy chief of staff Jim Messina in 2009).
Other recent rejection of "When they go low, we go high," collected in the WaPo article:
[Holder] said a more antagonistic spirit is “what this new Democratic Party is about,” adding, “We are proud as hell to be Democrats. We are willing to fight for the ideals of the Democratic Party.Yeah, MLK had a "nonviolence" shtick but he would have morphed to fit angry and divided times — if only he hadn't been a victim of violence. But Holder says he is "honor[ing] the legacy" of MLK by getting "combative." Maybe MLK was only choosing a means to an end and didn't have high principles at all, but if so, at least he picked effective tactics. Holder isn't even doing that. The angry aggressive approach is failing. Look at the post-Kavanaugh-hearings polls.
He tried to clarify that he wasn’t calling for violence, saying later in his remarks, “I don’t mean we do anything inappropriate, we don’t do anything illegal, but we have to be tough and we have to fight.” A combative strategy, he said, would honor the legacy of civil rights leaders, such as Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Martin Luther King Jr.
The WaPo article also has the new Hillary Clinton quote (which we talked about yesterday here): "You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about."
It doesn't have the second part of her quote — "That's why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that's when civility can start again" — which I credit for its humorous frankness. It's what I've been saying for years under my "civility bullshit" tag. In that view, Michelle's "When they go low, we go high" never meant we're lofty and principled and stick to our values, but that the idea we're high and they're low is effective rhetoric.
I suspect going high would have been more effective in 2018 than crazy-sounding combativeness, but in choosing a tactic, you're always at risk of being wrong. If you're principled and do what's right as an end in itself, then if it turns out not to get you want you want, you still have your honor. No one needs to follow you. No one needs to believe in you. But I don't think you are in politics. That's why I say calls for civility are always bullshit.
Combativeness isn't a new idea for Democrats, of course. Michelle Obama's line is memorable, but so is "If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard" (spoken by Obama's deputy chief of staff Jim Messina in 2009).
Other recent rejection of "When they go low, we go high," collected in the WaPo article:
"When I got pregnant, I was f**king freaking out. Everybody around me was like, ‘No, this never happened before.'"
"'Every artist that had a baby, they already put in years in the game. This is your first year. You’re going to mess it up. How are you going to make it?’ While I was pregnant, I kept telling myself, I can’t wait till I’m back out there. I’m going to look hot, and I’m going to be that bitch. Four weeks after giving birth, I was supposed to start rehearsals for a fall tour with Bruno Mars and I couldn’t even squat down. People don’t really talk about what you go through after pregnancy... When Kulture was born, I felt like I was a kid again; everything was making me cry, and I needed a lot of love. I feel better now, but sometimes I just feel so vulnerable, like I’m not ready for the world yet."
Said Cardi B in a W interview quoted at Tom & Lorenzo. She didn't go on that tour, she "sacrificed that to stay with my daughter," and that explains, she says, why she physically attacked Nicki Minaj:
Said Cardi B in a W interview quoted at Tom & Lorenzo. She didn't go on that tour, she "sacrificed that to stay with my daughter," and that explains, she says, why she physically attacked Nicki Minaj:
[S]he saw that Minaj had liked, and then unliked, a tweet disparaging Cardi’s mothering skills, something Minaj has denied. “I was going to make millions off my Bruno Mars tour, and I sacrificed that to stay with my daughter,” Cardi went on. “I love my daughter. I’m a good-ass fucking mom. So for somebody that don’t have a child to like that comment? So many people want to say that party wasn’t the time or the place, but I’m not going to catch another artist in the grocery store or down the block.”
October 10, 2018
Hillary Clinton: "You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about."
"That's why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that's when civility can start again."
Quoted at Facebook (with a link to CNN) by my son John, who adds a quote from me: "Civility is called for to tame the opposition, when it serves your interest."
AND: As long as I'm talking about the woman who lacks the sense to lie low before the elections, let me throw this in here "Hillary says series of sex claims against Bill are NOT like the Kavanaugh confirmation because her husband faced 'intense investigation'" (Daily Mail):
Quoted at Facebook (with a link to CNN) by my son John, who adds a quote from me: "Civility is called for to tame the opposition, when it serves your interest."
AND: As long as I'm talking about the woman who lacks the sense to lie low before the elections, let me throw this in here "Hillary says series of sex claims against Bill are NOT like the Kavanaugh confirmation because her husband faced 'intense investigation'" (Daily Mail):
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