July 15, 2019

"One day in early June, Kamala Harris, the junior senator from California, tapped the glass of the bakery case at a Blue Bottle coffee shop on a non-iconic block in Beverly Hills."

"No one seemed to know who she was—another polished professional woman, grabbing an afternoon coffee—which was fine by her. She had chosen the spot, presumably for the anonymity. A few minutes later, her body woman delivered her a cookie: caramel chocolate chip, covered in a light snowfall of flaky salt. As Harris broke off small pieces and popped them in her mouth, we talked about her early life, rummaging through the layers for identifying details. The child of immigrant academics who divorced when she was young—her mother, a cancer researcher, came from India, and her father, an economist, from Jamaica—Harris grew up between Oakland and the Berkeley flats, but also spent time in college towns in the Midwest and a few years in Montreal, where her mother was teaching. 'A very vivid memory of my childhood was the Mayflower truck,' she told me. 'We moved a lot.' She speaks some French. She loves to cook and enjoys dancing, puns. She tells her own story uneasily. 'It’s like extracting stuff from me,' she apologized. 'I’m not good at talking about myself.'"

The inauspicious beginning of "Kamala Harris Makes Her Case/The Presidential candidate has been criticized as a defender of the status quo/Can she prove that she’s a force for change?" by Dana Goodyear (The New Yorker).

Here's my screen shot of one of the 2 Blue Bottle coffee shops in Beverly Hills (from Google Maps):



Where do you go when you want to look like just another polished professional and you want to pop a light snowfall of flaky salt and talk about yourself without talking about yourself?

Did I read the rest of the article? Okay, I'll force myself to skim, but I take that opening to mean that Goodyear got nothing out of her. Let's see...
Harris, who is fifty-four, has a billboard smile, and brown eyes that soften easily but just as readily turn skeptical.
My eyes turned skeptical right there. I mean, my brain, basically. My eyes pretty much stayed the same. Both my billboard brain and my blue eyes are sixty-eight. Isn't that interesting?
I asked Harris whether she thought Americans had different criteria for Presidential candidates depending on gender. ... “I’m not carefully enough watching—and I probably should—how men are being treated compared to me. I’ve had this experience so many times that I don’t let it distract me,” Harris said. “Here’s the thing: every office I’ve run for I was the first to win. First person of color. First woman. First woman of color. Every time.” (Carol Moseley Braun, a Democrat from Illinois, was the first black woman elected to the Senate, in 1992; Harris is the second....)
Well, she said she's "not carefully enough watching." Carol Moseley Braun ran for President too. That was back in '04. The nomination went to John Kerry. (He speaks some French, you know.)(By the way, the name Carol Moseley Braun appears in the last paragraph of this article. There we learn that Mosely Braun is a Biden supporter, and after the recent debate, in which Harris lit into Biden, Mosely Braun "attributed the attack to misplaced 'ambition.'")
Harris has shown that she can rivet a crowd....
The evidence for this statement (which turned my eyes brain skeptical) is that she drew 20,000 people to her first rally. They came, but were they riveted?
But, in a Presidential primary, the audience demands an electrifying vocal. Five months into the campaign, Harris knew that she hadn’t yet found it.
But you just said she can rivet. She can rivet but she can't electrify? The feminist in me is triggered! The female New Yorker reporter is unwittingly characterizing running for President in terms of traditionally male occupations — electrician and riveter. But riveter is, famously, an occupation that women stepped up to when duty called in WWII. Maybe that's why it seemed to make sense to say she can rivet but she can't electrify. It's terrible how metaphor affects reason, is it not?!
“The challenge is, I think, people rightly want to have a sense of who somebody is,” she told me. “I’ve been thinking a lot about it recently, ’cause I know I need to frame it.”...
And here you are talking to the New Yorker reporter. You know what you need to do. Why not just do it (instead of talk about how you know you need to do it)? It creates the impression that you don't know how to do it.
At an intimate fund-raiser in West Los Angeles, I listened to her ramble on when asked a straightforward question about immigration reform, causing consternation in an otherwise friendly room. But she applied herself to the task of candidacy with A-student intensity. After our coffee in Beverly Hills, she was scheduled for back-to-back events and then a red-eye to D.C. “In high school, when I was getting distracted by other things, my mother would say, ‘Don’t do anything half-assed,’ ” Harris told me.
The reporter is being oh-so-gentle here, but — maybe because I'm reading with skeptical eyes — this is — in so many words — an accusation that Harris is running for President in a half-assed manner. And "A-student intensity" is not a compliment.
During her Senate campaign, Harris’s penchant for high-end travel made her staff cringe. These days, she carries a small Goyard tote and sits in coach....
I looked it up for you. A Goyard tote costs $1200. You may think — in  your skeptical eyes — who gives a good goddamn about the brand of "tote" Harris carries (and since when is a tote bag just called at "tote"?), but The New Yorker has a long history of doing very well with advertising for luxury goods and boosting the readers' simmering desire for such merchandise.
The next morning, Harris was scheduled to appear at a houseparty in Des Moines. En route, she stopped at a coffee shop near Drake University, an “impromptu” visit to a place pre-stocked with law students. “Oh! Hi!” she said, walking through the front door. “Surprise—or not,” she added, seeming embarrassed by the contrivance. She approached a group of students. “Contract law!” she said, glancing at the thick book on the table in front of them. “I had this awful professor, just awful—made you feel small. But so much about contract law is just human behavior.”
I google "who taught contracts at UC Hastings School of Law in 1986." She trashes a specific person for no good reason, then retreats to an intellectual observation without making it come alive. Why not connect that to Trump? He's all about the art of the deal, and isn't he a stable genius of human behavior?
A woman presented a piebald English bulldog, the Drake mascot, and Harris gamely crouched on the floor, scratching his belly, till the handler excused him, saying, “He smells food.”...
Probably, not a good idea to get down low next to a dog that doesn't know you, especially an English bulldog — "They were bred to fight bulls."
Growing up, Harris was surrounded by African-American intellectuals and activists. One of her mother’s closest friends was Mary Lewis, who helped found the field of black studies, at San Francisco State. When [her mother Shyamala] Gopalan worked late at the lab, Kamala spent time with her “second mother”—Regina Shelton, who ran a day care in the apartment below theirs, decorated with posters of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. Harris writes that Gopalan “knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women.”

The sisters spent summers with their father, in Palo Alto, and occasionally travelled with him to Jamaica, but he barely registers in Harris’s account. Meena says, “He was not around after the divorce. Their experience and relationship with blackness is through being raised in these communities in Berkeley and Oakland, and not through the lens of being Caribbean.”...

Kamala went to Howard and returned to San Francisco for law school. By then, [her sister] Maya, who had given birth to Meena at seventeen, was in college, so Kamala and her mother often took Meena for overnights and weekends. The matriarchy was intact....

Harris’s father does not participate in her public life (and didn’t answer a request for an interview). The exception to the rule is telling. In February, on “The Breakfast Club,” an urban-market radio show, Harris admitted to smoking a joint in college, and one of the hosts asked if she supported legalizing marijuana. “Half my family’s from Jamaica—are you kidding me?” she replied, laughing.... After Harris’s radio appearance, her father gave a statement to the Jamaican-diaspora Web site, reprimanding his daughter. “My deceased parents must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics,” he wrote. “Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty.” When I asked Harris how she felt about this belated, public parenting, she said, “He’s entitled to his opinion.” I asked if she found talking about Donald [Harris] unpleasant. “I’m happy to talk about my father,” she said, glumly. “But, ya know.” She raised her eyebrows, and said nothing....
The eyebrows readily turn... shut up.
[Kamala Harris] got her political education in the drawing rooms of Pacific Heights. San Francisco is an incubator of Democratic talent and the stronghold of California’s best-known political families: the Feinsteins, Pelosis, Newsoms, Browns. Politicians are pillars of high society. “People like Kamala, past mayors, the Pelosis, Feinstein, they are as much part of the socialite scene as the barons of industry and tech moguls,” a local observer told me....

During Harris’s short-lived romance with [Willie] Brown, he ran for mayor; they broke up sometime between his victory party and his swearing-in.... Stories that mention Brown have always infuriated Harris; when I asked her campaign about him, a spokesperson testily referred me to statements that she made sixteen years ago.
The reporter didn't even get the eyebrows for that one. If the Willie Brown stories infuriate Harris continually, why can't the New Yorker reporter give us a scene in which she confronted Harris? What were the ground rules of this interview that a spokesperson was able to give the final answer? My eyeballs are so skeptical here. Was she promised a puff piece? This isn't a puff piece, but there seem to be efforts at fulfilling a promise of puffery. I'm slogging through a long article here, and I find this really annoying.
Among political hopefuls, Brown is known as a mentor and a Pygmalion. Always nattily turned out—he favors Brioni suits and Borsalino hats...
More luxury goods.
... he believes that people in public life should present themselves well. “Women in politics need five or six well-fitted sets of pants,” he writes in his memoir. “They also need a complement of blouses or shirts that can be interchanged. And they need a whole series of blazers.”
Please refer to our advertisers.
Pelosi is always on point, he writes; Feinstein can look as if she’s caught between seasons. Tactfully, he doesn’t mention Harris, but he may as well have been cataloguing her wardrobe.
There's more about Brown helping Harris with her clothes and finally some substance:
Brown also arranged appointments for Harris on the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the state’s Medical Assistance Commission, which together reportedly paid her about four hundred thousand dollars over five years. He gave her a car.

[Brown's] advice to black women seeking political office: get involved at a high level with cultural and charitable organizations, “like symphonies, museums, and hospitals.” In 1995, Harris joined the board of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where she designed a mentorship program for public-school teens....

Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, is another Brown protégé... When Newsom was twenty-eight, Brown appointed him to chair the Parking and Traffic Commission of San Francisco. Not long after, when a seat opened on the city’s powerful Board of Supervisors, Brown chose Newsom to fill it. “I can candidly tell you with conviction I would not be governor of California—I would not have been mayor of San Francisco—without his support and his mentorship,” Newsom told me. “Kamala was not directly appointed D.A. of San Francisco. I think it’s patently unfair to judge that harshly and not judge my relationship.”...
Nice job of extracting the sex from the Harris-and-Brown story.
I asked Nathan Click, who once served as a spokesperson for Harris and now does the same for Newsom, who the elder was. “I don’t know—twins?” he said. A civic leader in San Francisco told me, “Kamala and Gavin are like two puppies rolling around having fun together, seeing who pops out first.”
There's an interesting quote!
As Governor Jerry Brown was entering his final term, Newsom was the lieutenant governor and Harris was attorney general. Governor was clearly the next job for each of them. “It divided the social world,” Mimi Silbert, who co-founded the Delancey Street Foundation, a residency program for ex-convicts, and who is an old friend of both Harris and Newsom, says. “It was, ‘I’m more for Gavin,’ ‘Well, I’m more for Kamala.’ ” As the tension was becoming excruciating, Barbara Boxer unexpectedly announced that she was giving up her seat in the U.S. Senate. Within days, Harris had declared that she would run for the Senate, clearing the way for Newsom eventually to become governor....
So... Newsom popped out first.
This spring, I met Harris for coffee near her Senate office, on Capitol Hill. She was in uniform: slim-cut dark pantsuit, silk blouse, black pearls. I asked her what would have happened if she had faced Newsom—a symbol of electability, the heir with the hair—in a race for governor. “I would have won,” she said—wasn’t it obvious?—and broke out laughing....
So... laughing = lying?
For much of Harris’s life, she has been single, with no children, focussed on her work. She married [Doug] Emhoff, a corporate lawyer in Los Angeles, at a tiny ceremony in 2014, where Maya officiated and guests were sworn to secrecy. When Harris is not on Capitol Hill, or on the campaign trail, she and Emhoff live together in Brentwood, with a freezer full of two-cup containers of Bolognese she makes ahead so that he can always have home-cooked food.
The feminist in me is triggered! Emhoff is always capable of having home-cooked food if he makes it his own damned self.
(Emhoff enrolled in cooking classes before the wedding, to make himself a worthy sous-chef.)...
Sous-chef = he can assist her when she cooks. But he'd have to go out to eat or have uncooked food if she didn't fill the freezer with Bolognese sauce whenever she ventured forth from Brentwood. (By the way, 1/2 cup is the portion size for pasta sauce in the U.S. (and that's twice what is it in Italy).)
One longtime donor, noting the country’s expectations around the First Family, told me, “When she married Doug, I knew she was running for President.”
Why else would she marry?!
After Harris finished signing books, she walked over to Emhoff. “How did you not die from maximum cuteness?” he asked her. Harris ignored the cloying remark...
Oh, the dismissiveness! Not even an eyebrow response!
... and, noting the presence of reporters, turned sober: a policy point was coming. “Kids pay attention to everything,” she said. “They remember it. That was an element in my school truancy initiative.”...
Do they remember when a wife refuses to acknowledge an effusive compliment from her husband?

I'm skipping over a lot of material on that school truancy initiative. It's good, but it's background that was available aside from the New Yorker's access to Harris. After that, we get a direct quote:
“I know that when I make decisions it will impact a lot of people,” she told me. “That’s where I’m not going to be modest. I also know that when I say something there will be a lot of people that will trust that I will have thought through what I’ve said. Mrs. Shelton, my second mother, and so many people in my life, they would often say, ‘Well, what does Kamala say about it?’ I know that there are people who count on me, and for that reason it is really important to me that I have and take into account all information, and if I was wrong about something, I don’t let pride associate. Because the consequence of what I do and what I say can be profound.” Her voice was quavering, and her eyes were filling. She swatted my arm. “You got me!” she chided....
So that's what made her start to cry. Remember when Hillary cried:



That helped Hillary a lot (back in '08) even though it was phony-baloney. I mean something was making her cry but the emotion doesn't fit with the words. We don't have video of Harris crying over "the consequence of what I do and what I say can be profound" (or was it "I don’t let pride associate"), but something got to her. "You got me!" But I don't get her.

And she wants to present herself as hard to know: "I’m not good at talking about myself."

Is it as simple as modesty? "I don’t let pride associate." No one at her level could possibly be simple. Modesty must be a minor trait. Carol Mosely Braun said the word: "ambition."

ON REREADING THIS POST: Suddenly I see what the glass ceiling is made of. It's all right there. Now, let me slip away and go tap on the glass of the bakery case at a non-descript coffee shop.

113 comments:

Roughcoat said...

Ugh. Well, smack that. Next case.

gspencer said...

"A few minutes later, her body woman delivered her a cookie"

What's a "body woman?"

Bay Area Guy said...

The New Yorker is providing the same service, journalistically, to Kamala that she provided to Willie Brown......

Fernandinande said...

has a billboard smile, and brown eyes that soften easily but just as readily turn skeptical

Sounds like our dogs, but she thinks she's people!

What's a "body woman?"

An assistant or secretary. (Yes i looked it up and even ngram-ed it; it's not new and also not popular)

Temujin said...

The New Yorker is a PR firm masquerading as a magazine. And this is so over-the-top, even for a PR firm. It's cloyingly sweet, like something her body woman would have brought over to her from the bakery case she just tap tap tapped on with her finely manicured finger nails.

These people are cartoon cut-outs. Trump is too. But he's the bulldozer to their smarminess.

MadisonMan said...

So she's in a rich neighborhood, getting a pricey cookie, presumably taking a break from shaking down rich people for money from her campaign, agreeing to an interview in a magazine read by other rich people.

And she's for the poor.

Uh-huh.

Tim said...

Almost made me sick with the too sweet descriptions of an unaccomplished social climber. Blew or sucked her way to the top>

Nonapod said...

"Some liberals, while professing a strong desire to see a woman of color in the White House, fear that California’s former “top cop” won’t fulfill sweeping progressive goals. To them, she seems like a defender of the status quo posing as a reformer."

Here's her policy positions.

In short, she believes in free tuition at four-year public colleges and nationalized pre-k rogram. She wants to ban "assault weapons" and sale of high-capacity magazines, and she support laws blocking some advertising by gun stores. She thinks is "Medicare for all" a super idea. She wants to "re-examice ICE. She wants to reverse the Trump Tax cuts. And she supports the Paris Climate Accord.

Plus she's made postive noises about reparations.

Based on all that, to me she seems just to the right of Mao Zedong.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Well the fake news polls have her only 1 point ahead of Trump. She’s obviously in need of some DNC-Media complex “propping up.” However this weak sauce attempt doesn’t even make her interesting, much less electable. They’re trying awfully hard to ignore her vicious prosecutor phase. It appears her Biden Bump has subsided. Good. She’s a huge phony.

Seeing Red said...

WE already lived they 8 years of “the new normal” and I wasn’t imPressed.

I like it better now. More people are working instead of languishing.

MadisonMan said...

What's a "body woman?"

A Progressive gofer.

gilbar said...

every office I’ve run for I was the first to win. First person of color. First woman. First woman of color. Every time.”

This is ABSOLUTELY true!
She WAS the first person EVER to win the 2016 California Senate race
She WAS the first person EVER to win the 2010 California Attorney General race
She WAS the first person EVER to win the 2003 San Fran DA's race

Beasts of England said...

Psychic spies from China try to steal your mind's elation
And little girls from Sweden dream of silver screen quotation
And if you want these kind of dreams it's Californication

gilbar said...

In, fact; she was the ONLY person to win those races!

Sebastian said...

"I asked Harris whether she thought Americans had different criteria for Presidential candidates depending on gender."

Well, yeah. Men are fair game. Trump, especially. Women are -- well, whatever. No 24/7 fusillade for them.

"The feminist in me is triggered!"

Why? Women are special, so they get special MSM treatment. Prog women, anyway. What's triggering about it, besides an opportunity to fisk?

Amexpat said...

I google "who taught contracts at UC Hastings School of Law in 1986."

I took contracts in 1989 at Hastings. I'm pretty sure we had the same law professor for that class. He was a big name in the field but not a very good teacher. He passed away years ago, so she's not defaming anyone alive.

Ken B said...

I gotta say, from this I do NOT see what the glass ceiling is made of. Harris won’t rise,but it seems plain there is no reason why she should. I don’t see anything here that explains why Margaret Thatcher or Indira Ghandi or Angela Merkel or Kim Campbell did not rise.

rehajm said...

A Progressive gofer.

Yeah, but in addition to fetching you a Fresca with one of those bendy straws you like so much they are they are also the point person for navigating the candidate through the spontaneous visit to the coffee shop the campaign manager's team spent weeks coordinating.

Now on to that college thing...

Bay Area Guy said...

"What's a "body woman?"

What Kamala was to Willie Brown.

Henry said...

A few minutes later, her body woman delivered her a cookie

That phrase had me playing catch-up for a minute. It's like something out of a Philip K. Dick novel or a Hunter S. Thompson trip. Is the reporter describing Harris's woman body doing something on its own? Is it an out of body experience? Robot host? Cookie?

Google tells me that body man / body woman is a well known term. "Assistant" isn't descriptive enough.

It would be fun to revive and repurpose the term "batman".

A few minutes her batwoman delivered her a cookie.

rcocean said...

What a great analysis! I hope the Democrats nominate her. The article skips over the fact that she went to a Hindu temple AND spent 6 years of her youth - ages 12-18 - in Montreal with her Hindu Mother. Its also not clear how Black her Stanford Prof father is. Obviously, this is skipped over because she must be presented as 100% African-American. Even though she had dual-identity before she went to Howard.

rcocean said...

ITs amazing how these D women running for POTUS think whining about "discrimination" with a "poor little me" attitude is a vote winner. We don't want a victim-in-chief, we want a Commander.

rcocean said...

Far from having a "glass ceiling" its perfectly obvious, that she was handed almost everything because she was (A) Black and (B) a woman. She had a mediocre record in law school. Wasn't any great shakes as a D/A. And then gets backed by the California establishment for Calf. AG and does an OK job and then gets backed for the Senate seat. There's nothing in the article or anything I've seen, that shows she's a great speaker or thinker. If she was white male, you wouldn't know of her. She'd probably be back in SF working in the DA's office.

Michael K said...

Since she grew up in Toronto, it was nice of her to come back to California to run for office. With Willie behind her (in front of her ?) it was more a walk for office.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

sappy propaganda for mass consumption.

Susan said...

Sometimes the evolution of speech goes in the stupid direction. How is body woman/man an improvement upon assistant? Stupid terms for stupid times I suppose.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Will the tear-soaked baby-sitting media remind us of this:

Kamala Harris made headlines last week when she joked in a radio interview that of course she smoked marijuana in her younger years: “Half my family’s from Jamaica. Are you kidding me?”

But the crack didn’t go over well with at least one Jamaican: Donald J. Harris, her father.

“My dear departed grandmothers (whose extraordinary legacy I described in a recent essay on this website), as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics,” he wrote.

“Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty,” he added.

Bay Area Guy said...

I'd love to see Kamala's white, liberal lawyer, husband go politicking in East Oakland in a hoodie

Comanche Voter said...

Well gollee! I would have thought that an "A student" would have passed the bar exam on the first try. Let's call her a C minus law student.

Wince said...

...and brown eyes that soften easily but just as readily turn skeptical...

“I’m happy to talk about my father,” she said, glumly. “But, ya know.” She raised her eyebrows, and said nothing.... The eyebrows readily turn... shut up.


That's what I meant before when I said she had a face for an Anacin commercial.

madAsHell said...

Kamala Harris is Hillary with less chardonnay, and fewer years.

Mike Sylwester said...

Does the article say whether Harris ever has talked with anybody at the Kasowitz Benson Torres law firm?

rehajm said...

Body man is normally specifically associated with that role to the President. It's either a writer's attempt to associate Kamala with the presidency or just fun to play pretend.

Ann Althouse said...

BleachBit-and-Hammers said "Will the tear-soaked baby-sitting media remind us of this..."

Yes, and I quoted it in the post.

Thanks for reading!

Fernandinande said...

another polished professional woman

Another woman professional knob polisher, grabbing an afternoon knob—which was fine by her. She had chosen the knob, presumably for the political value. As Harris popped it in her mouth, we talked about her early life, rummaging through the layers for identifying details.

Dave Begley said...

I saw her in CB. She looks like a movie star. Little substance.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Good God, who is that intro supposed to appeal to? Every working-class person in America would want to put that Kamala Harris against the firing wall.

Fernandinande said...

But the crack didn’t go over well with at least one Jamaican: Donald J. Harris, her father.

He's denigrating a religious sacrament.

he gave a statement to the Jamaican-diaspora Web site

"Rastafari is Afrocentric and focuses its attention on the African diaspora, which it believes is oppressed within Western society, or "Babylon"."

Overlapping diasporas.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Thank God it was a non-iconic block of Beverly Hills. Free the People!

Sam L. said...

She has a "body woman"? Isn't that, like, SEXXXXXIST?

Bay Area Guy said...

"I saw her in CB. She looks like a movie star. Little substance."

Yeah, Darnit, she is good looking in person.

I honestly think she will be President in 2024 -- I just hope it isn't sooner.

California liberals have created a 4-headed political monster: By age, it's Feinstein, Pelosi, Harris and Gavin Newsome. Sorry, Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff are not part of the cool kids.

chuck said...

Classic Althouse fisking, loved it. "Please refer to our advertisers", heh.

doctrev said...

Oh, Kamala, you are a Simple Simon even by the standards of Cali politicians. To be clear, academic mediocrity and government time-serving are an effective path to power for affirmative action candidates, and cleaning up the Governor's stains didn't hurt that path. But even Hillary Clinton realized she needed a child to connect with normal voters, which is why she enlisted the help of Webb Hubbell and a turkey baster. You don't even have that, Kamala!

The whole article is a series of humblebrags- "only" carrying a $1200 purse in coach, A-student intensity in a B to C student, rolling around like puppies with Newsom- and the few moments of personal history are intensely humiliating. Like when her "husband" goes gooey over her and she just blows it off. If you don't think Donald Trump can detonate one or both of them in front of a studio audience, you haven't been paying attention.

She might be able to con her way to the nomination, but this article makes it LESS likely, not more.

Fen said...

A FEW years in Montreal? LOL.

Fen said...

After the divorce, when Harris was 12, her mother moved with the children to Montreal, Quebec, Canada...After graduating in 1981 - wiki

12 13 14 15 16 17-18

"a few years"

Officer, I had a few drinks ...like 6-7...

Fen said...

"A few minutes later, her body woman delivered her a cookie"

I bet her body women doesn't count "a few minutes" as 6-7.

Kamala would be livid if she did.

doctrev said...

Yeah, if she lived that long as a child in 1970's Montreal and doesn't speak better French, it's because she's an ASSHOLE. "Some French" by reporter standards? That means that she can order off a menu with mostly correct pronunciation.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

"I’m not carefully enough watching—and I probably should—how men are being treated compared to me." -- having her caramel chocolate chip, covered in a light snowfall of flaky salt cookie and eating it too.

'asked if she supported legalizing marijuana. “Half my family’s from Jamaica—are you kidding me?”'


From Wikipedia: "Cannabis in Jamaica is illegal, but possession of small amounts was reduced to a petty offense in 2015.

BTW, Rosie the Riveter was a fraud, or at least the woman depicted in the illustration wasn't even close to what the image represents. While her countrymen were being beaten, broken, and killed in battle, the model for the most iconic Rosie image was a woman who worked at a factory for only two weeks before she quit because she was afraid she might injure her hands.

Ralph L said...

That statement from her father is beyond Thomas Markle harsh. What/who went bad in her family?

Who's the lighter weight--reporter or Harris?

Kevin said...

The one difficult election she faced - Governor of California - she ran from at the first opportunity.

If only she'd run and lost we'd be reading about how the defeat truly shaped her.

Her story turns from hubris to learning and redemption.

Oh well, we'll just have to dust off the born to be President meme then...

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

"Yeah, if she lived that long as a child in 1970's Montreal and doesn't speak better French, it's because she's an ASSHOLE."

Or she's simply not very bright. Maybe her "A-student intensity" is simply grade-grubbing grind insufferability.

Bay Area Guy said...

I'm hoping that Kammy knee-caps Biden again, which allows Warren to ascend up.

Of course, then Kammy will call Warren a racist for being a Republican long ago.

"I was with the GOP for a while because I really thought that it was a party that was principled in its conservative approach to economics and to markets, and I feel like the GOP party just left that," Warren said in 2014.

Kevin said...

"A few minutes later, her body woman delivered her a cookie"

This is to contrast what happens in the upcoming Amy Klobuchar piece.

Spoiler: it does not go well for the body woman.

Or the cookie.

Bay Area Guy said...

"ascend up" is probably redundant.

Kevin said...

"I was with the GOP for a while because I really thought that it was a party that was principled in its conservative approach to economics and to markets, and I feel like the GOP party just left that," Warren said in 2014.

Yeah, the Dems are now clearly the party of principled economics and markets.

So surprising no reporter followed up on that.

doctrev said...

Blogger Char Char Binks said...

Or she's simply not very bright. Maybe her "A-student intensity" is simply grade-grubbing grind insufferability.

7/15/19, 11:12 AM

If French was that hard tp speak, the Quebecois couldn't speak it. I didn't learn it because I was in a 99% Anglo area and didn't want a government job. In Quebec, even Montreal, not learning actual French guaranteed a much harder career progression. It is INSANE for someone who did most of their growing up in Montreal to run for President, especially against an American nationalist.

hombre said...

Democrats are not quick studies. Harris is in the running to be the worst or second or third worst President, along with Obama and Carter, and the worst half black (she is not AA) President.

She has a good shot at it.

Ralph L said...

"ascend up" is probably redundant.

She? wanted to be doubly clear it wasn't "going down."

Bay Area Guy said...

@Kevin,

Pocahontas: "I was with the GOP for a while because I really thought that it was a party that was principled in its conservative approach to economics and to markets, and I feel like the GOP party just left that," Warren said in 2014."

Yeah, the Dems are now clearly the party of principled economics and markets.

So surprising no reporter followed up on that.


Heh - just wait till Liz climbs a bit higher in the primaries. It's coming, brother.

cubanbob said...

The magazine could have staged the location better. Perhaps at the Ivy just shy of Beverly Hills.

Ann Althouse said...

“Or she's simply not very bright. Maybe her "A-student intensity" is simply grade-grubbing grind insufferability”

Yes, the phrase implies grade grubbing.

Really smart kids don’t have to be intense to get As. Just do the assignments and take the tests. What’s the big deal?

Infinite Monkeys said...

“How did you not die from maximum cuteness?” he asked her.

Her book is a children's book. The signing was for children. I think the "maximum cuteness" he was talking about was coming from the kids. Nothing cloying about the comment because he wasn't talking about her. How can I trust the author to have gotten anything else right when she was there, she saw the kids, and she didn't pick up on who the subject of the comment was?

Tommy Duncan said...

"She trashes a specific person for no good reason..."

If that trashed contract law professor was a white male it really doesn't matter, does it?

madAsHell said...

That means that she can order off a menu with mostly correct pronunciation.

Like the mayor from South Bend, she learned French just so she could read the menu.

What is it with the foreign language requirement?? It's like they're covering for all the C- grades on her report card.

Although I know our last president could not speak Austrian.

Tomcc said...

"...a billboard smile, and brown eyes that soften easily but just as readily turn skeptical."
When I read sentences like this, I silently retch.
Ms. Harris' life seems highly relate-able; sometimes at the grocery store the bakery section offers cookie samples and I take one!

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

Kamala might get dirtied up if the Smollett thing goes

Bay Area Guy said...

Kammy embodies the modern day Democrat:

(1) Eating cookies in Beverly Hills, enjoying fawning interviews with the New Yorker, after attending massive SoCal fundraisers by rich Hollywood leftists;

(2) Attacking whitey in the ghettos of East Oakland to get votes.

Amexpat said...

a billboard smile

Sounds dylanesque. Sort of like "warehouse eyes".

Limited blogger said...

I won't comment, cause there's no way I'm reading all that.

doctrev said...

Blogger Infinite Monkeys said...

Her book is a children's book. The signing was for children. I think the "maximum cuteness" he was talking about was coming from the kids. Nothing cloying about the comment because he wasn't talking about her. How can I trust the author to have gotten anything else right when she was there, she saw the kids, and she didn't pick up on who the subject of the comment was?

7/15/19, 11:54 AM

You might be right. Maybe not, though, there are men that can induce cringe merely by talking, much less saying something this asinine to their wife of convenience. Either way, it shows that Kamala Harris has political skills that may actually be sub-Clinton.

ken in tx said...

Women of a certain class have always had Lady's Maids. In the early days, you didn't even have to pay them--especially in Jamaica.

Christy said...

Didn't we all learn about a body man in the first episodes of West Wing when one had to be forced on Josiah Bartlett? Why do I suspect new political reporters marathon West Wing monthly? The reference to student effort also shouts that the author is still very close to her own student years.

Couple of nits. NPR told me decades ago, and so it must be true, that "Studies" programs grew out of a desperate need for People of Color on faculties. At the time not enough were available in the usual disciplines, so programs were developed wherein the minority was the expert and didn't need a Ph.D. to teach it. This in spite of her childhood mentor's claim.

Also, I find interesting the claim to serving on cultural and charity boards as an important resume builder. In the 90's those spots were held by the wives of important men in the community while the business and hospital boards were for the real leaders.😋

rhhardin said...

I’m not carefully enough watching—and I probably should—how men are being treated compared to me.

That's edited and not proofed. The "carefully enough" goes after the verb. Otherwise you get the "why that odd phrasing" reaction in every reader, like for a desperately avoided split infinitive.

rhhardin said...

The glass ceiling is made of a short circuit in brain function to feelings instead of investigation.

rhhardin said...

Gary Walsh is the perfect body man, in Veep.

RichardJohnson said...

Regarding Kamala Harris's apparently limited grasp of French, in spite of six years in Montreal, it should be pointed out that she attended Westmount High School, an Anglophone school. She never had to learn French well, so she didn't.

I am reminded of family friends who lived in Latin America for two decades. I met the youngest son when he was 17. While he spoke Spanish, his Spanish accent was that of a high school student in the US who was taking Spanish: not very good,in spite of his living in Latin America for nearly all his life. He went to an English language high school. Most of the time he spoke English at home. His Spanish accent wasn't very good because he didn't use it as much as one would have thought. Don't mistake his lack of Spanish proficiency for lack of intelligence: he later got a doctorate in aerospace engineering.

phantommut said...

Of all the Democratic wannabes, she's the only one I think of as actively evil.

Skippy Tisdale said...

""A few minutes later, her body woman delivered her a cookie"

What's a "body woman?""

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXA338ro1mo

Achilles said...

Harris grew up with far more money and privilege than I did.

Harris has slave owners in her ancestry.

Harris wants me to give her money because I am white and she is black.

Fuck democrats. War.

Ralph L said...

That's edited and not proofed.

Presumably, it's what she actually said, but you're right, it's awkward and distracting. Let's hear the tape.

Perhaps she was subconsciously thinking "I don't care" and the word popped out too soon.

stevew said...

Now that's one heck of a puff piece. Now they are working on building her out as a sympathetic character - they really want her to win.

Le Stain du Poop said...

Leave it to Kamala to have a "body woman" heh heh..

BJK said...

The child of immigrant academics who divorced when she was young—her mother, a cancer researcher, came from India, and her father, an economist, from Jamaica...

Not terribly surprisingly, the rest of the sentence indicates she lived with her mother after the divorce. Democrats and economics tend not to go together.

John henry said...

Like when her "husband" goes gooey over her and she just blows it off


Now that's an image I could have done without

John Henry

John henry said...

Ass end up is another

John Henry

John henry said...

If it is fair to criticize clarence thomas for marrying a white woman, as some blacks do

Is it fair to criticize harris for marrying a white man?

John Henry

Bay Area Guy said...

Biden is preparing to hammer his Dem foes!

During the second night of the opening debate series, he was grilled by California Sen. Kamala Harris about his opposition to federally-mandated busing, a program rolled out in the 1960s and '70s to encourage educational integration that personally affected Harris as a child growing up in northern California.

The new tactic comes after Biden foreshadowed a more aggressive campaign style by alluding to his team's collection of opposition research "about other people’s pasts" during a post-debates interview with CNN.


Heck, if Harris can raise 50 year old issues about her grammar school experiences, why can't sleepy Joe raise 25 year old issues about her law school experiences with a certain powerful, married, Mayor........

Doug said...

rcocean said she was handed almost everything because she was (A) Black and (B) a woman.

(C) she gives good head.

Doug said...

Michael K said: With Willie behind her (in front of her ?) (on top of her).

Josephbleau said...

In the Quebec English school system you are required to study the French Language each year. Anyone who has experience in Montreal knows you can’t get by without a degree of fluency in French. My American nieces and nephews lived in Nova Scotia for 3 years and speak French with a beautiful French Canadian accent.

Greg P said...

“The challenge is, I think, people rightly want to have a sense of who somebody is,” she told me. “I’ve been thinking a lot about it recently, ’cause I know I need to frame it.”...

And here you are talking to the New Yorker reporter. You know what you need to do. Why not just do it (instead of talk about how you know you need to do it)? It creates the impression that you don't know how to do it.

Because "what she needs to do" is "figure out what lie will push her forward." And she hasn't yet figured that out.


At an intimate fund-raiser in West Los Angeles, I listened to her ramble on when asked a straightforward question about immigration reform, causing consternation in an otherwise friendly room. But she applied herself to the task of candidacy with A-student intensity.

Yet another "front row kid" who thinks that "sucking up to the teacher" == "showing intelligence"

Marty said...

Not sure how this works in other blue political satrapies, but in California the northern Dem party was for years the plantation of the Burton family; all these lovely people mentioned in this article were house servants there at one time or another. Even Willie Brown, a skilled and powerful politician in his own right, was always smart enough to play ball with the Burtons. In 1987, Nancy Pelosi who had never held political office before, was an SF-based bagwoman who learned her skills from her old man, Thomas D'Allesandro, Democratic mayor of Baltimore in the 40s and 50s. John Burton plucked her from public obscurity and imposed her upon San Francisco after the death of Sala Burton, wife of his brother Phil, longtime patron of the state Dem party.

This Burton machine has long been an interlocking directorate as effective as the Mafia, complete with media complicity and voter acquiescence. What's fun to watch now is how the post-Burton powers in Silicon Valley are taking the network and updating it with the assistance of Gavin Newsom. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

(The LA wing of the Democratic party is a different and more diversified creature, often at odds with the SF tribe, mostly on how to divide the spoils. California politics is basically the endless wheeling and dealing of this latter-day Tammany Halls on how each clan will feed at the public trough.)

Newsom and his bosses publicly brag that they intend to California-ize the nation; Harris' candidacy is a spearhead of this fantasy.

walter said...

Daddy issues..

Sprezzatura said...

Assuming this guy takes out one container per day, he's only eating a third more sauce per meal than the US average, assuming he eats three times a day. And, he's a big guy. So what?

A serious concern is re the question re how long until this guy starves? If a freezer (w/ the capacity equal to the mean capacity for full-size residential freezers in the US) is is filled with two cup containers of sauce, how many days until this guy starts his fast?

Bonus: what is the ratio of days of food contained for the dude if he has an average capacity (re Italy) full-size freezer v if he constrains himself to the average Italian's serving size but he's using a freezer that happens to have the capacity of the mean US full-size freezer?

Ann Althouse said...

“Sounds dylanesque. Sort of like "warehouse eyes””

Exactly what I thought.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

"Don't mistake his lack of Spanish proficiency for lack of intelligence: he later got a doctorate in aerospace engineering."

He had A-student intensity, just like Kamala.

Sprezzatura said...

"Yes, and I quoted it in the post.

Thanks for reading!"

BBnH shoulda skimmed the post instead of reading it.

Then there'd be a long BBnH comment picking the post apart re every wee detail.

RigelDog said...

She seems nice. Great fisking, Althouse!

walter said...

I hope she gets dreads for the next debate.
Yah mon.

Howard said...

And after a while, you can work on points for style
Like the club tie, and the firm handshake
A certain look in the eye and an easy smile
You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to
So that when they turn their backs on you,
You'll get the chance to put the knife in

Unknown said...

> "I saw her in CB. She looks like a movie star. Little substance."

You notice how she fell back in the polls after her debate stunt on Slow Joe?

The people don't like her show - enough.

The Dem Establishment media must keep huffing gas into the deflating Harris balloon with puff pieces like this.

Unknown said...

> Newsom and his bosses publicly brag that they intend to California-ize the nation; Harris' candidacy is a spearhead of this fantasy.

Filling TX with Mexican peasants is the first step - open those borders and offer free health care and motor voter with no "vote suppression" (Ala Georgia Gov Tank Abrams) checking of voter roles should decimate the Reps forever.

That's the plan, baby.

John henry said...

Richard Johnson

Which Latin American cou try and where?

There are parts of Argentina, for example, where Spanish is a second, not a first language.

Buenas Aires as late as the 60s and maybe later had multiple Italian, German and English language daily newspapers.

John Henry

tomaig said...

Why would anyone name a dining establishment after a species of blow fly?
Especially one with the particularly repulsive Latin name "calliphora vomitoria".

Leora said...


William Safire: “The informal job title is not be confused with the man with the briefcase, the ever-present carrier of the codes needed by the president to respond to a hostile missile launch. It is more specific and intimate than gofer, a term applied to any aide ready to ”go fer” coffee or do other menial tasks.”

Joan said...

tl,dr: Harris sure is pretty but she's too stupid to be president.

So far, among all women candidates for president, the so-called "glass ceiling" preventing them from ascending is their complete lack of anything that would make enough people vote for them to win the electoral college: personal charm, a robust sense of humor, understanding of human nature, coherent policies, and perhaps most important, relevant experience.

Not a single female candidate has executive experience. Obama was a blank slate because the only thing he'd ever run was the Harvard Law Review, but he has that beautiful family. These ladies don't even manage their households -- none of them have children. It's probably a good thing that they remained childless, but raising children is indeed a management job and would give us some idea of how they'd do running the largest economy on the planet.

The only thing that made reading this "profile" of Harris palatable was Althouse's commentary. Thanks for doing the heavy lifting for us, Professor!

effinayright said...

Josephbleau said...
In the Quebec English school system you are required to study the French Language each year. Anyone who has experience in Montreal knows you can’t get by without a degree of fluency in French. My American nieces and nephews lived in Nova Scotia for 3 years and speak French with a beautiful French Canadian accent.
*************

The French think that "beautiful" accent makes Canadians sound like country folk.

(My French girlfriend of years ago said my accent sounded like I was a retarded Alsatian.)

MayBee said...

That is a really lovingly written article, isn't it.

Dave Begley said...

I saw KH on July 5th before 500-700 in Council Bluffs. Neither electrifying or riveting. Also met her very white and lucky husband. KH is hot!

The Dem state senator kept mispronouncing her name. Funny. He must be a racist.

RichardJohnson said...

John henry to Richard Johnson

Which Latin American coutry and where?

Asuncion, Paraguay. Coincidentally, it is a bilingual city, with Guarani the second language. I learned bits of Quechua (Peru, Bolivia) and Kekchi (Guatemala, also finding them not difficult to pronounce, but I could not handle Guarani pronunciation at all. Not at all.

Aussie Pundit said...

This article - dancing between the New Yorker and Althouse's commentary - made me realise that Kamala Harris won't be president, and in fact won't be the Democratic nominee.

She sounds cold, impersonal, and haughty, and like she doesn't know who she is or what she stands for. For example she welled up with tears when talking about how much power she'd have, but we have no idea why that made her teary.

Plus, in the back-room power contest with Gavin Newsom in California, Newsom won! The thing about becoming president is you have to be very good at politics in the House of Cards sense. Apparently she isn't. next.

tim in vermont said...

“speak French with a beautiful French Canadian accent.”

That might be the first time those words were written on the internet!

Charlie said...

She has an annoying laugh. Therefore, I will not be voting for her.