Clay acorn birdbath...

... with oak leaves.

A still life open thread.

How LSD made Jerry Hall a model.

An excerpt from her autobiography that I'm highlighting instead of all the junk about Mick Jagger:

The idea of being a model started when I was invited to a party. A boy gave me LSD without telling me what it was. I locked myself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out, not knowing what was happening to me.

All I remember is looking in the mirror and thinking: ‘You’re really beautiful. You should be a model.’

She was 16 and 6 feet tall. I can't believe it took LSD to give her the idea of becoming a model. She was 6 feet tall! But anyway... I do believe that, given LSD and a mirror, she had a fine time staring at herself and reveling in her beauty. I don't quite believe that the idea of monetizing the beauty arrived psychedelically.

Oh, I can't resist dragging Mick into this blog post. I just love this sentence: "One evening in New York, I found myself sitting between Mick and Warren Beatty at a dinner party." I just found myself... Yeah, how does stuff like that happen?La la la... there you are, minding your own business, and suddenly — hey, here I am sitting between Mick Jagger and Warren Beatty!

Mick had told me he took LSD every day for a year in the Sixties. He also admitted he was smoking heroin. I was disgusted.

LSD every day, eh? Is that even possible? Did he stare in the mirror and decide he was gorgeous? Imagine yourself as Mick Jagger on LSD and staring into the mirror: What is that experience like? Feel free to answer that question via Photoshop.

This is good too: "He wasn’t nearly as rich as people thought... We bought homes in New York, London, Paris and Mustique...."

"Obama did exactly the opposite of what should have been done" for the economy.

Said "Black Swan" author Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

"He surrounded himself with people who exacerbated the problem. You have a person who has cancer and instead of removing the cancer, you give him tranquilizers. When you give tranquilizers to a cancer patient, they feel better but the cancer gets worse."

This medical metaphor makes me think of Obama's old red pill/blue pill scenario from the summer of 2009:

What I've proposed is that we have a panel of medical experts that are making determinations about what protocols are appropriate for what diseases. There's going to be some disagreement, but if there's broad agreement that, in this situation the blue pill works better than the red pill, and it turns out the blue pills are half as expensive as the red pill, then we want to make sure that doctors and patients have that information available to them.

Some people read that as "death panels" — that is, that what the government would really do is give cheap, painkilling pills and wait for death to extinguish the expense altogether. So: "When you give tranquilizers to a cancer patient, they feel better but the cancer gets worse." That might be something some people would want to do.

There are inferences other than ineptitude.

At the Busted Puffball Café...

... you can talk about your broken dreams. I had a beautiful dream of a magic mushroom named Puff. Puff the puffball mushroom. I thought we were going to slice him up into a million little slivers and fry him in butter. But you saw fit to break up old rotten stumps and fling them away into the corner of the yard, without regard to the whereabouts of the puffball, whose magic proved limited to the power to attract hurled stump parts.



Ah, Puff! I wanted knife-sliced slivers, not cudgeled chunks. The puffball will therefore live out its days, uneaten, rotting and freezing in the salvaged iron birdbath, with the clay acorn, the iron bird, and — nearby — the unoccupied teapot birdhouse.

Which First Lady is taller?

Careful! Watch out for optical illusions!

IN THE COMMENTS: MayBee writes: "Marie Antoinette's heir meets Marie Antoinette's hair."

Bill Maher's second attack on Christine O'Donnell: "Evolution is a myth?!"

Okay. Fine. But who is that woman next to Maher saying "Science is a reality"? What's with her? Is she under the influence of something? I mean, it's an immense distraction from the get-Christine-O'Donnell agenda.

We forgot to buy Bob Dylan tickets.

Damn. Didn't think about it until the evening of the day the tickets went on sale, and now they are sold out. I guess we aren't the biggest Bob Dylan fans in Madison, Wisconsin. Ha. Yeah. Madison, Wisconsin. I need to understand this place where I've lived for over a quarter century.

From a series of "10 Great Makeup Looks From New York Fashion Week."

Here's one:



No? Then try "bumblebee eyes."

Russ Feingold distances himself from the Democrats.

In this pretty damned brilliant ad:



At first, I was all Why are they showing him chewing?... but then, the camera pulls back... and Russ is the loneliest Senator of them all.

This ad reaches the part of me that would find it very hard to vote against Russ. I hate to lend support to what the Democrats have been doing over the last 2 years. But Russ... Our Russ...

IN THE COMMENTS: Irene tells the story of the time her mother rubbed Feingold's head and said "Such a nice boy."

The government keeps trying to get us to do something and we won't.

It happens to be something that would be good for us. (Eating vegetables.) But our resistance to doing things the government eagerly and earnestly promotes is a strength. Don't be disappointed. Be encouraged.

Q: "What are the biggest geopolitical factors affecting mustaches right now?"

A:

There is still the perception that leaders cannot have mustaches, at least in the U.S. there are less than 30 members of Congress that wear mustaches, and unfortunately some of the people that have been deemed by Americans to be tyrants or evil, such as Saddam Hussein, have been heavily mustached. So I think that there is a perception still that Mustached Americans are incapable of leading, are incapable of being role models, are incapable of living a just life by certain sectors of our culture.

Oh, quit whining and shave. Hitler ruined the mustache for all time. We can't go back...

The Prime Minister keeps his baby in a box.

"Nancy made her a cardboard box when we were in Cornwall as we didn't have a cot and decorated it and she's still in the cardboard box. She'll be able to say I was brought up in Downing Street in a cardboard box."

Emergency...

... brassiere.

Sunset on the second day of autumn.

On Picnic Point.



Bring it on. I can take it!



Whatever it is.



It is so beautiful

Camille Paglia relives her burst into our consciousness in 1990 with her NYT op-ed about Madonna.

The anti-sex feminists are all gone, she says: "And I'm still here." And so is Madonna.

"I was a corn-packer. And I know that term is offensive. To some people. Because corn-packer is a derogatory term for a gay Iowan."

Colbert responds to Iowa Republican Steve King.



IN THE COMMENTS: Quaestor said...

Some impression[s] I've formed on this matter:

1) A disgusting and puerile corruption of the legislative process. Thank you Colbert, the Comedy Channel, and the Democratic Party (a wholly owned subsidiary of the Comedy Channel) for your efforts to uplift the cultural milieu of our heretofore tawdry government.

2) Colbert has been jealous of Jon Stewert's bottom line for years. Being a witness before a Congressional committee adds product recognition at taxpayer's expense.

3) A "Punch 'n Judy" show aimed to distract the MSM from Christopher Coates testimony before the Civil Rights Commission.

4) Witnesses before Congressional committees are typically sworn. Is Colbert liable to perjury charges?

How am I supposed to search for "$#*! My Dad Says" on my DVR?

Here's the transcript of last night's show. Sample line: "If it looks like manure and smells like manure, it's either Wolf Blitzer or manure." Dad's a right-winger.

Oh, let's see what CNN thought about the show that called Wolf shit:

Through an unlikely combination of elements -- a popular Twitter site; CBS trying to be "hip" about social networking; the chance to work with "Will & Grace" producers David Kohan and Matt Mutchnick; William Shatner wanting to try something new -- "$#*! My Dad Says" boasts the new season's most annoying title and the sight of a wasted resource in Shatner.

He plays Ed, a grumpy coot who complains about anything and everything....

Shatner knows how to spoof himself, and in interviews, he's clever and self-aware. Exactly none of these qualities are in evidence on "$#*! My Dad Says." Ed is some combination of the too-clever-to-be-believed grousing father from Justin Halpern's Twitter feed plus Archie Bunker -- i.e., the sort of character that CBS' older demo won't find too frightening because he's a familiar type.

CBS' older demo... Is network loyalty still a concept? I've been hearing since the 1970s that older people watched CBS. But back then there were only 3 networks and lots of us didn't have remote controls. I would have thought that by now people knew how to change channels and find stuff — $#*! — they like and that they wouldn't even bother noticing what network it was.

"For some reason I feel like Ann Althouse saying this..."

Oh, really? I'm stoked.

"DEM CRACKUP: COLBERT ASKED TO LEAVE HILL HEARING, NO SPEAK."

Drudge headlines.

REP. CONYERS TO FUNNYMAN: 'I'm asking you to leave the committee room completely, and submit your statement'... MORE... Rep. Lofgren steps in: 'Many are eager to hear his comments' ... Colbert mugs: 'I'm here at the invitation of the chairwoman, and if she would like me to remove myself from the hearing room I am happy to do so. I'm only here at her invitation'...

What a screwup!

Here's Colbert on his show last night horsing around about it.

UPDATE: Colbert did go on. Here's his 5 minutes of testimony... in character as a right-wing blowhard ninny:



It's quite hilarious to look at the faces of the members of the committee as they don't laugh at his jokes... because they have to take these things seriously. It's all so painfully awkward. Colbert looks pretty awkward too. He's not hamming it up comically as he normally does on his show.

Now, the point of his testimony is something that you used to hear said a lot more: that illegal immigration fills jobs that Americans won't do. Colbert, of course, doesn't want to be a farm worker. (The joke is that he tried that work for a day.) The reason you don't hear this argument so much anymore is that unemployment is so high. Is Colbert's effort to revive the old argument effective? I don't know. I think it's really creepy to talk about non-Americans as good for demeaning or brutal labor that is beneath us.

"The electronic lynch mob that has attacked and harassed me—you should see the emails sent to me personally!—has made my family feel threatened and insecure."

Cries U Chi lawprof Todd Henderson, whom I'm accused of being insufficiently empathetic toward. Ah! I love the smell of irony in the morning. A libertarian demands that the community coalesce and feel for the poor rich-but-not-that-rich man. Last night, I tweaked Professor Jacobson for babying Henderson, and this morning I see his update:

[T]he issue is ... serious, and has nothing to do with whether one agrees with Henderson's assessment of his reality.  Criticizing someone's views is one thing, reaching out and touching him is something else, as are deliberate attempts to damage his reputation based on false or misleading characterizations, which we all know takes place in the blogosphere.

Touched him? Where? I have an anatomically correct blogger doll, and maybe you can point to the spot. What does it take to get something specific around here? Henderson's good-bye-to-all-you-mean-people post says "you should see the emails sent to me personally!" and my response is: Okay, show me! Don't just tell me about your feelings: Give me the concrete facts or I don't know what you're talking about. Electronic lynching. Come on. You went on the internet — and from a position of considerable power. You made a good argument, and you got a response, one that you had to know you'd get. All is normal on the web as far as I can see.

Henderson admits:

The reason I took the very unusual step of deleting them is because my wife, who did not approve of my original post and disagrees vehemently with my opinion, did not consent to the publication of personal details about our family.

And there is the real problem. Henderson displayed very personal details about his family without asking his wife's permission. She has reason to be royally angry with him. I'm not going to ask to see a transcript of the dialogue the couple had about the blog post, but I'll bet it hurt a whole hell of a lot more than whatever is in those emails that we also haven't seen. Don't write about your family on the internet unless they consent. That is a basic responsibility that Henderson lost track of. To point to the vigorous pushback of political debate about taxing the most well-off citizens is to distract from that fundamental problem.

Now, I can read the mocking on other blogs. This ABA Journal piece sent me to Michael O'Hare and Brad DeLong. O'Hare digs into the numbers that Henderson himself provided:

Why a couple with a half-million dollars of debts decides it needs a million-dollar house in Chicago, where the Hyde Park average price "near their work"  is a third of that, is not entirely clear....

This leaves about $90,000, a lousy $245 a day,  for food, clothes, vacations, cable TV, and like that...

So how does our third-of-a-million-a-year law prof/doctor couple and their three kids, barely scraping by already and falling before our eyes to the very bottom of the top 1% of US families by income, make out under Obama’s rapacious soak-the-rich commie attack on all that is holy and American and fine?...

His taxes will go down $3700... And this guy is threatening to fire the gardener and the house cleaner, take the kid out of art class, turn off his cell phones, and try to raise competent adults with only basic cable.  Prof. Henderson, I’m ashamed to share my profession with you.

That is completely fair and astute comment. If O'Hare is wrong about Obama's taxes, he should be corrected. But I can see why Henderson can't fight with O'Hare: He'd have to have an endless public discussion of how he spends his money on himself and his family. It's humiliating and absurd, and his wife is pissed. (You want expensive? Try divorce.)

DeLong said:

Professor Xxxx Xxxxxxxxx's problem is that he thinks that he ought to be able to pay off student loans, contribute to retirement savings vehicles, build equity, drive new cars, live in a big expensive house, send his children to private school, and still have plenty of cash at the end of the month for the $200 restaurant meals, the $1000 a night resort hotel rooms, and the $75,000 automobiles. And even half a million dollars a year cannot be you all of that.

But if he values the high-end consumption so much, why doesn't he rearrange his budget? Why not stop the retirement savings contributions, why not rent rather than buy, why not send the kids to public school? Then the disposable cash at the end of the month would flow like water. His problem is that some of these decisions would strike him as imprudent. And all of them would strike him as degradations--doctor-law professor couples ought to send their kids to private schools, and live in big houses, and contribute to their 401(k)s, and also still have lots of cash for splurges. That is the way things should be.

But why does he think that that is the way things should be?...

Is it pathetic that somebody with nine times the median household income thinks of himself as just another average Joe, just another "working American"? Yes. Do I find it embarrassing that somebody whose income is in the top 1% of American households thinks that he is not rich? Yes.

Again, fair and deserved criticism. Henderson had to expect it, but he doesn't want to have to deal with it. He can't really. He just plain lost a fight. He hurt his cause. And I'm still not empathizing.

"Only Eddie Fisher, as a boyhood friend of the frantic playgirl, seems like something dragged in from left field."

"He plays a music writer who lives in a dark room in Greenwich Village and acts as if he wishes they would all go away and leave him alone."

From the 1960 NYT review — by Bosley Crowther — of "Butterfield 8," the movie Elizabeth Taylor won an Oscar for playing "the slut of all times" in. Fast-forward to 2010 and Eddie's dead.

When Eddie Fisher's best friend, producer Mike Todd, was killed in a 1958 plane crash, Fisher comforted the widow, Elizabeth Taylor. Amid sensationalist headlines, Fisher divorced Reynolds and married Taylor in 1959.

The Fisher-Taylor marriage lasted only five years. She fell in love with co-star Richard Burton during the Rome filming of "Cleopatra," divorced Fisher and married Burton in one of the great entertainment world scandals of the 20th century.

Fisher's career never recovered from the notoriety.

Eddie, like Todd and Burton, is now dead. He made it to 82. What did he do after Liz? Did anyone pay attention to anything other than Liz? Even now, the old man finally gone, we hear of his death, and we think — don't we? — of the goddess Elizabeth Taylor.

What do alumni attending their 15th law school reunion want to hear a lawprof talk about for 15 minutes...

... over dinner at 8 p.m. tonight?

UPDATE: Thanks for all your help! I quoted quite a few of the comments a the end of the speech, which I think was pretty well received.

"The tax man's taken all my dough and left me in my stately home... and I can't sail my yacht — he's taken everything I've got..."

That's the song playing in my head after reading about University of Chicago lawprof Todd Henderson, who's desolated that people don't sympathize with how hard it is to get by in Chicago on $250,000 a year. The pushback he got was totally predictable, and, indeed, it was only the anticipation of criticism that made it an interesting thing to say in the first place. How much courage does it take — especially for a highly privileged and experienced speaker — to state an opinion and stand by it when it's criticized? I really don't see why William A. Jacobson and Glenn Reynolds are babying this man.

UPDATE: I continue here.

"[F]or Axelrod to plead with liberal bloggers for their help turning out the base, only to get accused of 'hippie punching,' is an iconic moment in Campaign 2010."

Interesting... but what the hell is "hippie punching"?

That tension burst out into the open when [Susan Madrak of Crooks and Liars] directly asked Axelrod: "Have you ever heard of hippie punching?" That prompted a long silence from Axelrod.

"You want us to help you, the first thing I would suggest is enough of the hippie punching," Madrak added. "We're the girl you'll take under the bleachers but you won't be seen with in the light of day."

Ha ha. Long silence. Axelrod did exactly what I think I'd do. Keep silent, because I don't know what it means, and I don't want to be embarrassed by admitting it. But now that I've worked a bit Googling and searching Urban Dictionary, I'm not embarrassed to say I don't know what it means. And I don't know what it has to do with under-bleacher sex, but that's a creepy metaphor to throw at Axelrod. I don't much like the man myself, but when you get access, ask some good questions in plain English. Don't be weird.

"Tonight the death machine exterminated the beautiful childlike and loving spirit of Teresa Lewis."

Said Lewis's lawyer.

Lewis' life took a deadly turn after she married Julian, whom she met at a Danville textile factory in 2000. Two years later, his son Charles entered the U.S. Army Reserve. When he was called for active duty he obtained a $250,000 life insurance policy, naming his father the beneficiary and providing temptation for Teresa Lewis.

Both men would have to die for Lewis to receive the insurance payout....

On the night before Halloween in 2002, after she prayed with her husband, Lewis got out of bed, unlocked the door to their mobile home and put the couple's pit bull in a bedroom so the animal wouldn't interfere. Shallenberger and Fuller came in and shot both men several times with the shotguns Lewis had bought for them.

At the New Lawn Café...

... you can get your bare feet all wet.

Puff the Magic Mushroom...

... lives by the tree.

"Velma Hart, an Obama supporter who, employing an O'Donnellesque unidiomatic preposition, told the president she was 'exhausted of defending you.'"

Ha ha. James Taranto is, like me, distracted by the wrong preposition. (I said, about O'Donnell: "It bugs me more that she says 'dabbled into' than that she actually did it (or claimed to).") Taranto is writing about Margaret Carlson's response to Hart, which is important because Carlson "personifies liberal Beltway conventionality."

"It's all about the insularity. Otherwise how do you explain how a group who came in with more goodwill in decades squandered it?"

A quote from "a longtime Democratic strategist who works with the White House on a variety of issues." He says that Obama and his inner circle "miscalculated where people were out in the country on jobs, on spending, on the deficit, on debt... They have not been able to get ahead of any of it."

From an article about how members of that inner circle are going to be leaving:

The inner circle - Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, senior advisers David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, press secretary Robert Gibbs and Vice President Biden - is breaking up, or at least breaking open. Emanuel is widely expected to run for mayor of Chicago, and Axelrod is likely to leave this spring to prepare for Obama's 2012 reelection effort.

Obama will soon lose other top advisers. His chief economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, announced that he will return to Harvard, where he is a professor; Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina is expected to join Axelrod in Chicago; and national security adviser James L. Jones is said to want out by the end of the year.

Some former aides and allies of the president expressed hope that Obama will take advantage of the departures - which are common at the two-year point in any presidency - to bring in outsiders who will challenge the president's current team.

Like some sort of "Team of Rivals"? If only he'd thought about that at the outset of his presidency!

Hey, what happened to Kausfiles?

I was complaining yesterday that in 3 days, there were only 2 paragraphs showing on the front page of the blog that got all us bloggers noticing that it went to Newsweek.

Today, I go there and not only is there no new post on this, the fourth day of the blog, the whole page is blank. The original 2 posts are gone!

I do see some sidebar links to other stuff in Newsweek, like "GOP 'Pledge to America' Looks Unlikely to Inspire." Ha. Well, to me, Newsweek looks unlikely to inspire. What ridiculous writing! How does one look unlikely to inspire? What a phrase. Could they hide their bias a little better? They can't report on something new that the other side does without getting the jump on it and assuring their brain-dead readers that it can't possibly be any good.

Jeez, the Kausfiles blank page looks likely to be the most readable thing over there.

UPDATE: Now, the page is back, with the original 2 posts, plus a new post, "Isn't Anybody Against Porn?"

Are we really such an advanced nation that even an extreme "staunch social conservative" has to deny opposing pornography? There's something depressing about that. If not Christine O'Donnell, who?

Not just "staunch," but "extreme 'staunch'"! What's that like?

"I tell you if there's anything worse than dealing with a staunch woman... S-T-A-U-N-C-H. There's nothing worse, I'm telling you. They don't weaken, no matter what."

Also, there's a difference between "opposing pornography" and wanting opposition to pornography enacted into legislation. Her old statement about pornography and adultery was her interpretation of religion. You can have a very high standard as a matter of religion and still leave people alone as a matter of law.

Major Madison photo-op: "Obama rally to take place at Library Mall."

It should be a huge crowd. I'm certainly planning to go.

Obama asks faith-based groups to help him get his message out about the Democrats health-care-reform legislation.

Politico reports:

With health reform’s popularity steadily slipping, top administration officials turned to faith-based groups that supported the law to do their part explaining it. On an hour-long conference call Tuesday, they outlined the Patients’ Bill of Rights and asked faith-based and community groups to get the word out on the new provisions. “I wanted to have this call because we have a big day coming up, the six-month anniversary of health reform’s passage,” President Obama told leaders on the conference call, hosted through Health and Human Services’ Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Obama later added that, “The debate in Washington is over, the Affordable Care Act is now law. ...I think all of you can be really important validators and trusted resources for friends and neighbors, to help explain what’s now available to them.” Joshua DuBois, head of the White House’s Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, got even more specific: “Get the word out there, get information out there. Make use of the resources described on this call: the website, door hangers, one pagers and so forth. We’ve got work to do.”

Religion as the handmaiden of government, serving as really important validators and trusted resources for friends and neighbors. Worldly power seeks to inflate itself with whatever credibility religion can cede.

Once you are the really important validator of government, can you be a really important validator of God?

***

"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other."

Rush Limbaugh thinks Obama is icy cold — like Michael Dukakis... and Buck Turgidson.

Don't let the horrible photo chosen by Media Matters here stop you from listening to the audio. It's an excellent performance by Rush, including his approximation of the George C. Scott performance:



The transcript — along with the Dukakis and "Dr. Strangelove" clips — is here. He's talking about the new Bob Woodward book:

Woodward asks about terrorism, terror attacks, and so forth. Obama says, "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever, we absorbed it, and we're stronger." That, to me, is the equivalent of Dukakis being asked, "If your wife were raped and murdered, would you favor the death penalty?" So Woodward says, "What about terrorism?" Obama figures, "Ah, we can handle it. We can absorb it. We're even stronger." That's not cool. That is cold, and it reminded me of something. One of my all-time favorite movies is Dr. Strangelove. A Stanley Kubrick movie. And one of the characters in this movie is General Buck Turgidson....

And Buck Turgidson is one of these stereotypical generals. He just wants to nuke the world. He just loves war and hates the Russians, hates the commies. He just wants to nuke everything. And Buck Turgidson said, "Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching the moment of truth, both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always pleasant thing. But it's necessary now to make a choice: To choose between two admittedly regrettable but nevertheless distinguishable postwar environments, one where you get 20 million people killed, the other where you'd get 150 million people killed." Turgidson was saying, "Let's send more B-52s! Let's just wipe these people out while we're at it, since we can't call this one back. Let's just be rid of them. We'll kill 20 million of them and that's it. They can't kill any of ours. It's a livable situation, Mr. President."

Peter Sellers playing President Merkin Muffley says, "You're talking about mass murder, general, not war," and Turgidson replies, "Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed but I do say no more than ten to 20 million killed tops, depending on the breaks." Here's a guy totally cold and unaffected by the possibility of ten to 20 million people being killed in an accident and wants to say, "Let's go wipe 'em out even further." The president can't believe what he's hearing. You have Dukakis, "If your wife was raped and murdered, would you favor the death penalty?" "No, Bernard. As you know, I've long and consistently opposed the death penalty during all my life." Obama is asked, "Mr. President, what is your attitude on terrorism?"

"Well, we could absorb one of those, a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it but even a 9/11, but even the biggest attack ever we absorbed it and we're stronger. We can deal with it." All these examples are of leftists and they are cold, removed, unemotional, unaffected, uninvolved.

Did he just call Turgidson a leftist?

Anyway, you know how it must pain the average-citizen leftist to hear that Obama, like Dukakis, is cold and unemotional. It can't be true! Obama is about empathy.

[Click here for video of George Lakoff explaining Obama's "empathy campaign."]

Remember when Bill Clinton made us — some of us — think he feels our pain? Obama, aloof, observes that we have an excellent capacity to absorb pain. We're pain sponges, apparently, so there's nothing to get too worked up about.

I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops! Uh, depending on the breaks....

It's the new Contract With America: the "Pledge to America."

The written document.

"The momentum is with us."

Sayeth... Nancy Pelosi.

Boiling Springs.

Oh, there's an apt name.

"[T]heme weeks forcing folks out of their wheelhouse are out, and stay-within-your-box-and-make-the-box-awesome with decade-based theme weeks is what's in."

"American Idol" update. So, if you're country, you'll be allowed to sing country, every week, and not prove that you can do, say, disco.

And Jennifer Lopez and Stephen Tyler are the new judges, joining Randy Jackson, the only original judge left:

Tyler, the first new judge Seabiscuit announced, bounced out on stage like a rat terrier hot on the trail of something rodent-y, grinned, and began to sing/scream "American IIIIIIIDOL," in his adorable, screechy, Steven Tyler way....

Shortly after Tyler skipped off stage, Jennifer Lopez rose from under the stage in a cloud of white faux-smoke.

"It's all about concentration! You have to concentrate -- and just live!" J-Lo advised auditioners in the audience....

You have to concentrate -- and just live.... Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do.

Philosophy is everywhere.

"They say that all good things must end someday. Autumn leaves must fall."

Equinoxiously yours,

Chad and Jeremy

P.S. It's the Super Harvest Moon tonight.

"Jean [Harlow] did not like to wear bras and was advised by her mother to ice her breasts to keep them firm."

"Similarly, she did not like to wear underwear because she disliked lines and she also preferred to sleep in the nude. Although these clothing practices were considered racy, especially due to her sex-symbol status, she actually approached them with a child-like freedom from confinement."

That all makes sense to me. Except the part about ice!

I ran across that by accident after searching — unsuccessfully — for the old Clairol ad with the tagline "If I have only one life, let me live it as a blonde." While it made being blonde seem awfully important, I always thought it was bizarre to remind us that we're all going to die. How much compensation for that calamity could we get out of blondeness?

Another commercial from the same era tried to encourage us to use the product (Schlitz) with: "You only go 'round once, and you've gotta grab for all the gusto you can."



Wow. They really rub it in with the sharks that ate the guys in the shipwreck. Must drink beer! I guess it takes a heavier hand to use death as leverage against guys.

Anyway, what's this post about? Freedom, commerce, death as an incentive to live, an icy brew and... for the adventurous: icy breasts!

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic...

"President Barack Obama is helped by Vermont Governor Jim Douglas to move a couch in the Oval Office, Feb. 2, 2009. Governor Douglas met with the President about the economic recovery plan."

Obama to Bob Woodward: "We can absorb a terrorist attack... even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger."

From Woodward's new book.

Obama also said that of course, he's trying to prevent any attacks, but his point about absorbing whatever hits us and getting stronger... it's true, isn't it?

If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

It's true, right?

Classier version of the same: "What does not destroy me, makes me stronger."

(Hey, check it out: "Twilight of the Idols" has a Facebook page.)

AND: Make the Althouse blog stronger. Use this link if you buy the Woodward book.

Sorry, I deleted my blogroll last night. It's Mickey Kaus's fault.

I put his new, Newsweek blog on the roll, then, trying to remove his old, dead link, I clicked a button that said "remove." Apologies to all whose links I've deleted. I'll rebuild it over the next few days.

Meanwhile, while I'm on Mickey's case, let me say that I hate the format of his new blog. There's one post a day, and you have to click through a separate page to see that there are multiple topics. So, on the main page, yesterday's post — there's no more recent post (get on it, Mickey) — is headed "Andrew Breitbart 'Pissed' at Glenn Beck?" And you can see the first 10 lines or so before clicking.

Do you click? Maybe not. Maybe you don't care about AB and GB. But if you do click, you get to additional stuff that's got nothing to do with AB and GB:  "why I can't get too worked up about GOP Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell's alleged ethics violation"... "the DREAM Act... a familiar tradeoff—compassion in the short term vs. preventing large social problems in the long term..."

So why are those subjects stuck where you might never see them? It's Mickey's old style of collecting in one continuous post what most bloggers would put up as separate posts, combined with Newsweek's format of limiting what is on the front page. That format is, I believe, motivated by a desire to boost page views. This turns something that was fun about Mickey's old blog — the rambling, gossip-column style of going from item to item — into bondage to Newsweek's commercial interests. Blech!

And the truth is, I didn't click through on Mickey's first post until just now — because I didn't bite on the first-page teaser: "Get Me More Sarah Palin! Her secret weapon? She gets hit on." Ah, I realize now that he's making the point I just made. He's grasping after page views. Ha. Anyway, on the inner page, he says:

--kausfiles on Newsweek won't be quite the same as kausfiles on Slate. My early New Year's resolution is to be a lot more interactive (e.g. responding to comments), a bit less insidery, and a lot more Instapundit-y--emulating the wildly popular Tennessee blogger who posts lots of short links to worthy articles by others. Please let me know how I'm doing.

Of course, Instapundit doesn't have comments — except on a very rare occasion when a Madison, Wisconsin revolutionary storms the gates — and I think comments will be great. But this post-page business that I can't stand is something Instapundit doesn't do. One reason we love to click on Instapundit is that there will be so much stuff there right in view, on the main page. Yeah, there are a lot of links, but the vast majority of readers don't click on any given link. He sends a lot of traffic to the people — like me — whom he links, but that's because so many readers go to Instapundit, not because everyone clicks. Why does he start with so much? Because there is so much there to be seen at the first click — exactly what Mickey is not doing.

You can go back to Instapundit many times a day and get your instant reward of something new right there. By contrast, Mickey's blog, with all the fresh attention it's getting for the first 3 days, still only has 2 posts — 2 paragraphs on that front page. That's negative reinforcement for clicking. You can say you want to be Instapundit-y (and therefore wildly popular) but you've got to give and give. You can't withhold. And if you are withholding because big media is hungry for page views, the readers — me at least — are the ones who will withhold.

ADDED: Lots of links on one page is also the charm of the Drudge Report. Talk about wildly popular. It's harder to stay off it than to indulge your addiction and check it out one more time.

"Brooklyn is now overrun with rats and opossums."

"A few years ago, officials in Brooklyn, New York came up with a seemingly brilliant idea to deal with the rat-infestation problem in their borough: release opossums into the neighborhood to eat the rats...."

Ha. Of course, like rats, they prefer garbage. No shortage of that.

"The critters have a mouth full of 50 sharp teeth, tend to exude a foul odor, and can occasionally contract rabies... They are nocturnal, and some Brooklynites have become terrified to go into their yards at night."

Oh, Brooklynites! I thought youse guys were tough.

Time to bring in some wolves, I think. They eat rats.

What's in Bob Woodward's "Obama’s Wars"?

The NYT reports in advance of the publication date:

The president concluded from the start that “I have two years with the public on [Afghanistan]” and pressed advisers for ways to avoid a big escalation, the book says. “I want an exit strategy,” he implored at one meeting. Privately, he told Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to push his alternative strategy opposing a big troop buildup in meetings, and while Mr. Obama ultimately rejected it, he set a withdrawal timetable because, “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”...

[T]he book describes a professorial president who assigned “homework” to advisers but bristled at what he saw as military commanders’ attempts to force him into a decision. Even after he agreed to send another 30,000 troops last winter, the Pentagon asked for another 4,500 “enablers” to support them.

The president lost his poise... “I’m done doing this!” he erupted....

And President Hamid Karzai suffers from manic depression.

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian writes:

"I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party."

He doesn't mind losing the war or the country, however.

ADDED: My response to that quote — "I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party" — is: The President is saying — can it be true? — that there isn't even a small fragment of the party that would support fighting the war with a serious commitment to victory. How damning!

Leonard Skinner has died.

Leonard Skinner.

Harry Reid called New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand "the hottest member."

Blatant sexism from the Democrat's leader in the U.S. Senate.

Gillibrand, who was sitting right there, turned bright red.

"Women wanted to remove their support from men, the ‘enemy’ in a movement for reform, power and self-determination."

"Once I understood the feminist doctrines, a lesbian separatist position seemed the commonsensical position, especially since, conveniently, I was an L-person.”

Jill Johnston, the staunchly radical feminist, has died. She was 81. In the 1970s, she was the radical feminist, and we read her every week in The Village Voice.

"The evolution of right-wing abuse of President Barack Obama... was not unlike the evolution of American pornography."

"It took a long time for the appearance of things like bare breasts and pubic hair to occur, but once those thresholds had been crossed, it didn't take long for the most lurid things to be freely depicted and for the competition for obscenity to become ever more extreme. 'Everybody's afraid now of being outdone from the right... So when somebody eventually comes out and calls Obama an "Afro-Nazi," it will go mainstream quite fast.'"

Christopher Hitchens, just getting warmed up in a tirade that is... not unlike the evolution of American pornography.

Kaus to Newsweek.

"Basically I write about what I feel strongly about, which is the blog's strength and also its weakness. I don't try to cover every topic. Readers know I won't waste their time unless I think I have something to add."

ADDED: The link is to the New York Observer which headlines: "Newsweek Staunches the Flow of Talent with Blogger Mickey Kaus." Well, Mickey is a staunch blogger and Newsweek may be bleeding, but the Observer needs to stanch the flow of usage errors.

"A 62-year-old woman visiting a local Culver's sees several restaurant patrons with guns on holsters in plain view."

She thought it was an appropriate time to call the police. She didn't understand Wisconsin. It was time to calmly scarf your butter burger.

"True to Munster's love of modern art, light bulbs now hang in the cages..."

"... as a symbol that ideas cannot be bound by bars."

A political candidate displays his bloody wound.

Is this the way to argue that you should be governor?



We were talking about this ad in the comments to last night's live blog of "Dancing With the Stars," a show I was watching (for the first time) to see how Bristol Palin would be presented. Here in Wisconsin, in between the spangled, befringed, high-heeled prancers, we got an eyeful of Tom Barrett's gaping wound. Irene wrote:

In the Madison market, we were treated to an ad for Tom Barrett's campaign.

He's using the horrific beating he suffered as the theme of the ad.

He has an attractive wife with short hair.

He has a labradoodle.

I said:

I've seen that ad before and think it's quite awful. So he did what a decent person would do and got hit in the face. For that, he should be governor? Aren't there 100 war heroes in Wisconsin with more serious injuries? Why is Barrett ahead of them? And what's with foisting a picture of a bloody wound in our faces over and over? And his wife saying over and over that he is a good guy? Aren't there 100,000 good guys in Wisconsin whose wives will vouch for them on camera? What nonsense!

"6 ways that artists hack your brain."

Neuroaesthetics.

O'Donnell "is actually defaming Wiccans."

"Whether she intends to do that or not as a way to try and get herself out of this political problem she has created for herself, the fact is America really needs to be a place where you can celebrate diversity and practice your religion without getting ridiculed or defamed."

"There will be high security tonight when Sarah Palin shows up to watch daughter Bristol perform on 'Dancing with the Stars'..."

Watch with me? It's on in a few minutes.

7:02: Wow! Crazy lights! Crazy cleavage! And now, the stars must walk down stairs! They seem powerfully challenged by the stair walk. Margaret Cho — tee hee, Margaret Cho is on — pretends to trip, probably to be funny, but maybe because she was going to trip anyway and needed to fake it. Bristol is all bundled up in a weird spangled gray blazer. Hasselhoff is here — representing the dissolute. Florence Henderson is here — representing the geezers. Is Bristol a "star"? She's identified as a "teen activist," which I guess she was, as a walking (dancing) anti-sex counterexample.

7:12: Audrina Patridge has sexiness going on here (judge points crotchwards) and beauty going on here (judge points facewards) and they aren't really connected. But she's got just the right body for the show, we're told. So... giant breasts. I think dancers look better with small breasts. Actually, they look more connected.

7:15: The NFL guy (Kurt Warner) says he has big shoes to fill (a past winner was an NFL guy), and I note that Warner has tiny feet.

7:25: Kyle Massey, an actor. So far, I'd never heard of any of these people. Massey shimmies and gets his moobs all jiggly. The lady judge acts like that gets her hot.

7:35: Rick Fox. A basketball guy. Never heard of him. Sorry, I FF'd that.

7:40: Next is Margaret Cho. "You're doing it like you're sitting in the bathroom doing number 2," her partner informs her, helpfully. She's got a gold pleated cape that she suddenly unfurls into a vortex as the music hits the chorus: "We are the champions, my friends." Then, she gets comically tangled in it, and her partner "saves" her. Oh, it's hard to pull off comical dancing. I don't think that's for beginners. But this is the only one I'm watching straight through. Maybe because I like the song. Ugh, she falls on her ass (on purpose) to end it. We see her much-mocked mom, applauding. Oh, no, the judges had to ask if it was supposed to be comic. I think the criticism should be that you have to be really good, first, before you can pull off comedy. The judges just tell her to dance without any comic stuff. Dumb!

7:57: Oh, lord. It's a 2-hour show. Now: Brandy. Heard of her. Wholesome. Boring. I need to let the DVR get out ahead of me so I have room to FF. Haven't live-blogged a reality show in a long time. Oh, Sarah! Look what you've done to me!

8:02: Bristol time! The song is "Mama Told Me Not to Come." Because you know you can only get pregnant if you have an orgasm. The more references to Sarah, the better, they seem to think. She's going to "dress up like her mom." People only know her because of her mom. Her partner tells her: "Just have fun and go balls out." The point of the gray suit is to suddenly rip it off and be wearing a short red dress and demonstrate what is "not the way to have fun," per Mama. See? She's the activist by counterexample. The judges are pretty nice to her. Mama is not there though. But Florence Henderson is next, and she's bringing the Mom.

8:16: Flo, who is 76, is eager to show us she's feisty and talks dirty. She is not Mom, she implicitly screams. She's has pretty legs.

8:25: Michael Bolton demonstrates the principle that being able to sing does not include being able to dance. He's earnest and charming. I can see that the point of this show (which I've never watched before) is for the celebrities to get us to like them. But I don't think it's good to be the guy that made me notice that. On the plus side for Bolton: It seems much easier to be a female novice shown off by a male professional than the other way around. The guy is supposed to lead, so the structure of the competition is inherently unfair. But, as the judges admitted (to FH a moment ago), it's really an entertainment show. So, I guess, watching the big, awkward men get it together amuses folks.

8:43: What are the rules of this competition? Why is Jennifer Grey on? She's most well-known for a dancing role. And the song is a song from that movie. And her co-star in that movie recently died. And we see her burst into tears over it. "It took me back in a time capsule... and I was with Patrick." Too manipulative. Not fair. But it's entertainment. Entertainment is not fair. There's no fair in entertainment.

8:46: We are informed by one of the judges that Patrick Swayze is watching the show from Heaven. Another judge — the one that said the head and crotch of Audrina were not connected — is telling us — through tears — that there is "such a connection." Ugh.

8:53: Hasselhoff is last. He whines. He hams it up. I confess I laughed out loud. Judge Bruno: "It was like a potpourri of insanity disguised as dance."  Okay. It's over. Whew! Time for hamburgers.

ADDED: I forgot to blog The Situation. He forgot to rehearse. We're even.

AND: Hasselhoff reminds me of Lorenzo St. DuBois — Dick Shawn.

"No mention of Hillary's locks? You're slipping, Althouse!"

Says commenter E.M. Davis, who apparently thinks I do nothing but monitor and comment upon the internet all day long. But thanks for the tip, Eemie, old man. He links to a Daily Mail article titled "Oh Hillary, that hairstyle just doesn't cut it: Mrs Clinton prepares for huge UN meeting with lank locks."

The normally perfect bouffant was gone, to be replaced by what came to be known on Kate Moss at least as the Croydon Facelift.

Well, it's not "normally perfect" and the rest is British gibberish. Britterish.

Mrs Clinton's hair was scraped back and clipped on top of her head, but looked lank and in need of some love and understanding....

It's the clip that is objectionable. You only see it from the side. Maybe it was put in for a frontal photograph, but it looks way too casual (or even trashy) from the side — like showing up in curlers.

With minimal make-up, Mrs Clinton's 63 years came into sharp focus as she moved neatly from urging Pakistan to mend its reputation to an attempt to undermine Mr Ahmadinejad within his own country.

Now, there's a crazy sentence!

But, anyway. About the hair. We all know Hillary is growing her hair longer. Robin Givhan pointed that out a month ago:

Clinton's hair, now creeping toward below-the-shoulders territory, is practically radical for Washington's seasoned female power elite. Good for her....

Cultural pressure to submit to the scissors after a certain age seems rife with an unkind and unspoken subtext that because long locks are a sign of vibrancy and sexiness, it's a social contradiction to see such styles on women who have wrinkles and crow's-feet.

Another popular argument is that long hair drags down the face -- and a face that is showing the effects of gravity should steer clear of anything that might make it look even longer in the tooth.

Throw into the conversation the attitude that long locks are tools of flirtation. They are a handy excuse for a toss of the head; a strand might have to be girlishly flicked out of one's eyes or coyly tucked behind the ear. May a 60-year-old woman flirt?

I think we know what it's about: Sarah Palin. Suddenly, long hair has come to mean power, and there's no need to try to approximate the men anymore. Why ape the men when you can emulate The Divine Sarah?

"I guess O'Donnell could have deliberately inserted a casual malaprop to enhance her populist appeal and distinguish herself from the nitpicking media elite..."

Hey! What if these rubes are just pretending to be rubes?

That night I sat down with the witches.

In the comments on that last post, Irene says: "Wicca seat savers: I had almost forgotten." Oh, yes! How apt, in these witch-hunting days. The text, from my old post about going to see Camille Paglia at a bookstore in Madison:

I show up early for the Camille Paglia reading at Borders this evening. The place is packed. I find a seat and then, here’s Chris, sitting with Nina, and they’ve saved me a seat in the second row. There are a lot of saved seats. Next to me is a seat saved with a copy of a book called “Wicca – a Guide for the Solitary Practitioner… over 400,000 copies sold.” At first, I think, 400,000? So we’re screwed... And then, I think, well, apparently not. Two women show up and claim the Wicca seats. One says, looking at the book, “Oh, cool. I’m kind of interested,” and the other says, “Me, too.”

"BRUCE BAWER: Whatever Happened To Camille Paglia? She was never the same after crossing swords with Ann Althouse...."

Ha ha.

And here's the direct link to the Bawer piece:

In those first years after Sexual Personae, Paglia seemed to turn up everyplace. By 1992 she had churned out enough irreverent, entertaining essays for a sizable collection, Sex, Art, and American Culture. Two years later along came another grab-bag, Vamps and Tramps. For a while, the pieces just seemed to pour out of her.

But Paglia was too hot not to cool down. As the years went by, her output declined. And what she did turn out seemed increasingly familiar. She was repeating herself. What had once been provocative was now stale. And her determination to inject herself and her personal history into everything she wrote grew tiresome....

And then came 9/11.... On this all-important subject, Paglia was all but silent....

For some years now, Paglia’s chief forum has been a monthly column on the salon.com website in which she’s combined pop-culture commentary with political opinions. Though she continues to try to sound boldly irreverent, her schtick is old, her voice is tired, and her politics are more consistent with the official liberal line than any Paglia enthusiast of twenty years ago would ever have expected...

Then, on the Sunday before last, the London Times ran what seems to be the longest essay Paglia has published in years. It was touted by the newspaper as “explosive.” What was it about? Banning burkas? Suicide bombing? Female genital mutilation?  No, it was about Lady Gaga....  her Lady Gaga piece accomplished was to affirm her irrelevance.

Here's my reaction to the Gaga goo goo.

And here are: "My Dinner With Camille" ("I didn't know I was capable of stressing out such a big rockstar diva") and "Try to Survive a Tornado With a Post-Structuralist" (the blog post that stressed her out).

Just before it died, my computer started writing everything in italics.

Like it was screaming for help, and I heard it not.

"The spirit of Frank Zappa is alive and well in Baltimore."

It was Frank Zappa Day in the city of his birth — not that he spent much time there. His family uprooted him and replanted him in L.A. when he was 10.

Imagine Zappa without all the California in him. Imagine Baltimore Zappa.

"Unfortunately, most Americans know little of this progressive history. It isn't taught in most high schools."

Asserts The Nation:

You can't find it on the major television networks or even on the History Channel. Indeed, our history is under siege. In popular media, the most persistent interpreter of America's radical past is Glenn Beck, who teaches viewers a wildly inaccurate history of unions, civil rights and the American left. Beck argues, for example, that the civil rights movement "has been perverted and distorted" by people claiming that Martin Luther King Jr. supported "redistribution of wealth." In fact, King did call for a "radical redistribution of economic power." Using his famous chalkboard, Beck draws connections between various people and organizations, and defines them as radicals, Marxists, socialists, revolutionaries, leftists, progressives or social justice activists—all of which leads inexorably to Barack Obama.

A proffered remedy in the form of a list: "The 50 Most Influential Progressives of the Twentieth Century."

"We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party."

The Democrats are trying to figure out the best way to scare the bejeezus out of you.

Really, where did the Tea Party come from? Suddenly, it's everywhere. It's all these people congregating at rallies. No leaders. Just spontaneous comings-together. How could that happen? Then, the leaders emerge. Who are these people? They came out of nowhere. And one of them... is a witch!

Crazy Daily News headline: "President Obama hits church with First Family in bid to altar 'Muslim' myth."

Quite aside from the (deliberate?) misspelling — "altar" for "alter" — and the repetition of the "myth" — which I'm putting in quotes only because it's their word — the newspaper purports to know why a man (and a woman and 2 little girls) go to church.

Let me give you a quiz. (The first response below is the one The Daily News ascribed to the President and his family.)

Excluding weddings and funerals and the like, what's the primary reason you'd attend a religious service?
	To enhance my reputation in my community.
	To accompany a family member or members and thus please or set a good example for them.
	To get together with friends and associates.
	For the beauty of the music, the literature, and the art and architecture.
	As insurance, in case there really is an afterlife.
	To worship God and pray.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: I'm glad at least a couple people admit to the afterlife insurance motivation. But here's the thing: What if doing religion as afterlife insurance is the one thing that pisses God off?

"I'm not a talking head."

Sayeth one of Crack Skull Bob's Sunday morning talking heads.

At the All In Café...

... that's enough now.

Margaret Carlson says that Sarah Palin is "becoming old, aging in dog years."

And she needs to watch out for Christine O'Donnell...

Although with soft lighting, the pair look like they were separated at birth, in fact, the baby-faced O'Donnell looks less like a twin than a daughter. Time is cruel to women, especially on HDTV. Your older man becomes a distinguished Old Lion and a woman just becomes old, aging in dog years. O'Donnell at 41 is five years younger than the 46-year-old Palin, who is a grandmother after all.

Dogs, eh? Sounds more like cats!



Meow!

Maureen Dowd says Christine O'Donnell, like Barack Obama, is "smart to think of politics in terms of passion and myth."

That is, Barack Obama, the presidential campaigner. As an actual President, the "passion and myth... are sorely missing." 

Obama’s bloodless rationality has helped spawn the right’s bloodletting of irrationality.

Now, there's an assertion! I agree that the blood is on the right, but I'm not seeing much rationality from anyone.

[Obama] has never shaken off that slight patronizing attitude toward the working-class voters he is losing now, the ones he dubbed “bitter” during his campaign....

The insane have achieved political respectability while the sane act too good for it all. The irrational celebrate while the rational act bored and above-it-all.

Oh, my. This is all so Dowdesque. She gets multiple themes going, many mixed images, and she demands that you believe that she's tied them all together when she says she has. It's ironic here, because she's the one full of passionate intensity and low on rationality. What I just can't buy is that Obama is rational. He's phlegmatic. He always was. You can read that as rational, but it's irrational to do so.

***

I was just reading an old post of mine from April 2007 — "Is Obama a gasbag?":

[I]f I didn't know who he was and that there was a crowd there, I would picture an old man slumped in an armchair, expatiating for the benefit of anyone unlucky enough to be within earshot. It's formless stream of consciousness. Oh, there is that theme of hope. The stream swirls back there at predictable intervals....

[R]eally, such drivel. Just listing a lot of issues and saying hope, hope, hope should not inspire real hope. I can't believe people are hearing this and thinking: brilliant rhetoric. "Intellectual slovenliness" is a much more apt phrase.

Yes, I know, I ultimately voted for him. Here's a post of mine from February 2008 explaining how I got from "gasbag" to the decision to vote for him in the Wisconsin primary. I can't really say that I was terribly rational.

New York Magazine rocks snarky headline, poor reading.

Their headline is: "Caroline Giuliani Rocks Smirk, Long Hair While Cleaning Toilets." You're invited to smirk at the notion of hair dipped in latrines and e. coli wicking its way scalpward:

[S]he was "decked out in an orange work vest," the Daily News reports, but she let her long locks flow down over her shoulders in a sort of "devil may care" way, we noticed, while donning a simple gray dress for photo-ops and, once again, showing off that camera-ready smirk of hers. Still got it!

Here's the Daily New story, the source of the photo NY Mag is riffing on. Caption: "Caroline Giuliani (in an older photo)...."

"Once again"... an old photograph looks the same as it used to look.