December 6, 2023
"'I decided that I didn’t want to be a woman before I had ever experienced being a woman. I had no idea what being a woman was like because I was a child.'"
Writes Molly Hennessey-Fiske, in "'Detransitioners' wield influence in shaping conservative transgender laws" (WaPo).
"The latest version of the College Board’s A.P. African American studies framework... leaves out critical race theory and structural racism...."
"A dearth of charging infrastructure is one of the top reasons Americans say they won’t buy an electric car."
Goodbye to Norman Lear.
“You looked around television in those years,” Mr. Lear said in a 2012 New York Times interview, referring to the middle and late 1960s, “and the biggest problem any family faced was ‘Mother dented the car, and how do you keep Dad from finding out’; ‘the boss is coming to dinner, and the roast’s ruined.’ The message that was sending out was that we didn’t have any problems.”
ADDED: I've written about Norman Lear on this blog a few times:
July 27, 2022: I blogged Norman Lear's NYT piece — "On My 100th Birthday, Reflections on Archie Bunker and Donald Trump" — and said: "Lear says Archie, if he were around today, would probably watch Fox News and vote for Trump. Probably?! He also imagines that Archie would have disapproved of the January 6th incursion on the Capitol. But why? Seems to me he'd approve, but Lear doesn't want him to, so okay. "
2 from Glenn Greenwald.
This is what you will hear from all liberal corporate outlets for the next year: no, this time we mean it! This time Trump *really will be* fascist!
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 4, 2023
These are the people imprisoning non-violent Jan 6 protesters, prosecuting Trump to win an election, censoring the internet: pic.twitter.com/t4QxWFCYjq
Amazing yet so telling that the US politician who is one of the leading proponents of torture, secret CIA black sites, kidnapping, and sending everyone to an endless array of new wars except her own family ended up hated by her own voters but beloved by liberal corporate media. pic.twitter.com/C0IZ2Et6KE
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 5, 2023
"Even though he has opponents in the primary, the party leadership has ordered that only Biden will appear on the primary ballot."
"George Floyd was saying 'I can't breathe' when he was standing up straight and just being coaxed to get into the car."
"Trump and the Republicans held leads on... being for working people (a 7-point advantage), standing up to elites (8 points)..."
Writes Thomas Edsall, in "'This Is Grim,' One Democratic Pollster Says" (NYT), reporting the results of a poll of voters in battleground states and competitive House Districts. The poll was done by James Carville's group, Democracy Corps.
December 5, 2023
Snow on the trees at dawn, this morning.



"He was the antidote to the Marvel-led glut of synthetic, bulging muscles that looked like CGI but were real and the brute brand of masculinity associated with that type of body."
Writes in Allison P. Davis, in "The End of His Heartthrob Era/An assessment of Chalamet’s sex appeal as he steps into the role of Willy Wonka" (Vulture).
"I've thought a lot about what will happen to Tyler. It seems inevitable that less scrupulous people than the 'This American Life' team will find him..."
I wrote on April 1, 2017, in a post about the brilliant podcast "S-Town" ("Shit-town").
I'm reading that this afternoon because I see the NYT headline "Tyler Goodson of ‘S-Town’ Podcast Is Shot Dead in Police Standoff/Mr. Goodson, who had been featured in the investigative podcast set in the town of Woodstock, Ala., 'brandished a gun at officers' before he was fatally shot, the authorities said."
Are you joining me in Burlington, Vermont?
If you're on Spotify, you, like me, got its "Wrapped 2023," summarizing our taste in music based on what we actually listened to. It tells each of us that "one place listened just like you," as an image of the globe rotates and homes in on one place.
I got Burlington, Vermont:

In the realm of law school rankings and affirmative action: "There is no subterfuge here."
As schools weighed their decisions, some questioned the purity of the boycotters’ motives. One theory: Some schools, correctly anticipating that the Supreme Court would soon strike down race-based affirmative action, could be planning admissions changes that would hurt them in the rankings but preserve diversity. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board surmised as much, saying, “The Yale and Harvard announcements look like attempts to adapt in advance.”
When the University of Michigan’s law dean heard this theory from an alumnus, he dismissed it, saying in an email shortly after Yale’s announcement that his school’s decision to withdraw was “100% not connected to any Supreme Court ruling.”
“There is no subterfuge here,” wrote Mark West, dean at Michigan, which ranked 10th at the time.
Why have anti-Trump Republicans chosen Nikki Haley as the one who should beat Trump?
December 4, 2023
Oh! He's getting credit for sophistication now.
Trump is no longer a wild crazy idiot. Pay attention to the reframing.
I'm reading "Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First/Donald Trump has long exhibited authoritarian impulses, but his policy operation is now more sophisticated, and the buffers to check him are weaker" in The New York Times.
"Holy smokes. We've reached a new low. First people wanted to stop interacting in person. Now they don't want to be seen on screen."
"Biden was initially ambivalent about the term, then embraced it — but 'Bidenomics' has recently disappeared from his prepared speeches...."
• The term was seen as tone-deaf to voters still struggling economically and also invoked a president with lackluster polling numbers.
• One Democratic strategist said the biggest problem wasn't using "Biden," but that the term was too philosophical and required too much explanation.
"Biden is also known to swim naked."
That made me want to look back at my post on the subject — here it is, February 17, 2021 — because I seem to remember thinking — while others evinced outrage — that it's fine and not sexual behavior to swim naked in your own pool, and if you're stuck with Secret Service protection, it's their job to endure it stoically. I'd quoted Biden:
"[L]iving in the White House.... it's a little like a gilded cage.... The vice president's residence is totally different. You're on 80 acres overlooking the rest of the city. And you can walk out. There's a swimming pool. You can walk off the porch in the summer and jump in a pool and go into work...."
I said:
The Oxford "Word of the Year" is one of those Gen Z slang words that is just an abbreviated version of a regular word.
It's "rizz" — short for "charisma."
Reported here in the NYT, which offers some detail on the procedure, because you want assurance that the selection is not rigged:
"Cher joins the Rolling Stones with at least one new No. 1 on a Billboard songs chart in each of the seven decades from the 1960s through the 2020s...."
Go to the link if you want to see the names of all those #1s in all the relevant decades.
I've always loved Cher, but for me that means the Cher of 1965 (and the Cher of "Moonstruck"). But if she wants to do a Christmas recording, it's pretty much the way I feel about Bob Dylan doing a Christmas album. Go ahead. Do what you want. You've earned it. And I will continue to avoid the annual avalanche of Christmas music.
Anyway, click if you like. It's Cher's #1 Christmas song:
Having created a new tag and added it to 7 posts in this blog's archive, I list the 7 posts in an order other than chronological.
3. December 4, 2023 — President Theodore Roosevelt waded naked in Rock Creek in full view of onlookers, described by Edmund Morris.
6. December 1, 2023 — TR's "cyclonic" personality, as described by Edmund Morris.
7. April 25, 2004 — "Edmund Morris gives a pretty bad review to the brilliantly titled book about punctuation, 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves.'"
"On winter evenings in Rock Creek Park, strollers may observe the President of the United States wading pale and naked into the ice-clogged stream, followed by shivering members of his Cabinet."
From "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" by Edmund Morris (Amazon commission earned).
I finished reading this 1,162-page book yesterday. The last 2 sentences are fantastic: "As he ate his sandwiches he saw below him in the trees a ranger approaching, running, clutching the yellow slip of a telegram. Instinctively, he knew what message the man was bringing." Teddy, with sandwiches, ranger with telegram.
I was going to say "The last 2 sentences are perfect," but the "As" suggests a precise moment in time and so "sandwiches" — in the plural — is hard to picture/believe, even if Teddy did have multiple sandwiches for lunch. "Below him in the trees" is understood. He's in the mountains. (Here's the drop pin on Google maps).
The natural thing for me to do at that point was to go back to the beginning of the book. Is it wonderful or dismaying to see how many things surprise you when you reread a book you've just read? But there's the President, wading naked into Rock Creek — in winter, to be seen by casual passersby — on page 24. (Here's the drop pin for Rock Creek Park.)
Bob Dylan sang "But even the President of the United States/Sometimes must have to stand naked." But I've always thought of as meaning that the President must, like anyone else, need to get naked to take a shower. Or it's all metaphor, expressing an imperative that the President be fully exposed. But it will never be required that the President strip naked for winter river wading in full view of onlookers.
December 3, 2023
The NYT headline about Trump's Cedar Rapids speech is so close to WaPo's headline that I was afraid for a moment that I'd mistakenly attributed the NYT headline to WaPo...
Will the history of Napoleon's return repeat itself?


"Trump attempts to spin anti-democracy, authoritarian criticism against Biden/The former president declared his 2024 campaign as a 'righteous crusade' against 'tyrants and villains.'"
Form your own impression. Here's the entire tirade (yesterday, in Cedar Rapids):
"The leaders of the world have failed. They have failed to master the overriding concepts, the fundamentals and the day-to-day tactics."
Said Henry Kissinger, on October 18, 2023, quoted in "Henry Kissinger’s (Maybe) Last Interview: Drop the Two-State Solution/In one of the final interviews before he died, the famous statesman said the two-state solution was no longer viable and that the U.S. must reconcile with China" (Politico).
"We’re looking into finding ways to build a mechanism of coordination between all the swing states so that... Muslim Americans will come out in all of these states, and that Mr. Biden will lose each and every one of them."
December 2, 2023
Sunrise — 7:00.

"I used to always hear Democrats saying, 'The election was all just Trump’s racist appeals,' but I actually went to the rallies in 2015."
We were kicking him, and he moved his ass.
“This is not a casual vote for us. It’s something you take very seriously and and he should have taken it seriously,” Pelosi told reporters following the vote, adding that he “should have been man about it.”Be a man — I hadn't heard that in a while.
"Is it embarrassing that Santos was elected in the first place? Yes. But that’s democracy. Sometimes voters make mistakes."
Writes Adam Serwer, in "Expelling George Santos Was a Mistake/Forcing the New York representative out of the House after a conviction would have been justified; pushing him out beforehand is not" (The Atlantic).
December 1, 2023
View of the Wisconsin Capitol — with coots — at 7:04 a.m.

"We are on Day Five of journalistic insistence on canceling an elementary school student by any means necessary."
We are on Day Five of journalistic insistence on canceling an elementary school student by any means necessary. https://t.co/Z3hvTe8UrT
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) December 1, 2023
"The man’s personality was cyclonic, in that he tended to become unstable in times of low pressure."
I'm reading "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" by Edmund Morris (Amazon Associates link/commission earned).
That passage jumped out at me, because I'd just heard Elon Musk say about himself "My mind often feels like a very wild storm."
"Music, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds."
Musical anhedonics are thought to account for up to 5 percent of the world’s population.... The syndrome is often discussed in the same articles that ponder the mysteries of autism.
"House Expels George Santos From Congress... 'To hell with this place,' he said after his colleagues ousted him."
Representative George Santos, the New York Republican... the subject of a 23-count federal indictment, was expelled from Congress on Friday after a bipartisan vote by his peers. The move consigned Mr. Santos, who over the course of his short political career invented ties to the Holocaust, Sept. 11 and the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, to a genuine place in history: He is the first person to be expelled from the House without first being convicted of a federal crime or supporting the Confederacy....
Who's next? Or is this a one-of-a-kind thing?
[H]e became a Republican Party liability....
"Since college, I have had an 'obese' to 'morbidly obese' body mass index — a measure that is at best inaccurate and at worst racist."
Writes Courtenay Hameister, in "Were We the ‘Fat Couple’? If that’s how our friends saw us, I couldn’t bear it" (NYT).
Sandra Day O'Connor has died.
"Sandra Day O’Connor, First Woman on the Supreme Court, Is Dead at 93/During a crucial period in American law — when abortion, affirmative action, sex discrimination and voting rights were on the docket — she was the most powerful woman in the country" (NYT).
Fifty-one years old at the time of her nomination, she served for 24 years, retiring in January 2006 to care for her ailing husband. As the court moved to the right during that period, her moderate conservatism made her look in the end like a relative liberal.From the WaPo obituary, by Fred Barbash:
She never went far enough in any area of the law to fully satisfy either conservatives or liberals of the day, Republicans or Democrats....
"A city cannot do 'good works' if it is financially challenged and if property taxes make housing unaffordable for homeowners and renters alike. Sadly, we are already there."
Did Elon Musk use the word "blackmail" incorrectly? Jonathan Chait thinks so...
Blackmail is a specific crime in which the perpetrator threatens to release public information unless the victim pays them or performs some service.
November 30, 2023
Sunrise — 7:07, 7:16.


"If somebody's going to try to blackmail me with advertising — blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is. Hey, Bob, if you're in the audience."
"[U]nlike everyone else, [Melania] was not wearing black...."
Writes Vanessa Friedman, in "Rare Gathering of Former First Ladies Shows Style, and Subtle/Differences United (mostly) in black, their differences were in the details" (NYT).
Notice that Friedman's description is not a criticism of Melania. It's respectful.
"How Did San Francisco Become the City in a ‘Doom Loop’?"
Karlamangla asks Barron:
You write about the “doom loop” idea — that San Francisco will spiral downward because all its problems are interwoven. But downtowns across the country have struggled after pandemic lockdowns. Why do you think that narrative has persisted so strongly in San Francisco?
The narrative? Barron answers:
The most obvious answer is that things are actually going wrong.
"In a matchup for the White House, President Joe Biden is virtually tied with former President Donald Trump among Minnesota voters...."
There's a big gender gap: "Fifty-six percent of women polled, and just 35% of men, said they favor Biden. Meanwhile, just 32% of Minnesota women polled, and 53% of men, said they support Trump."
You have to go back to 1972 to find the last presidential election where Minnesota voted for the Republican:

"He advised 12 presidents — more than a quarter of those who have held the office — from John F. Kennedy to Joseph R. Biden Jr."
Writes David Sanger, in "Henry Kissinger Is Dead at 100; Shaped Nation’s Cold War History/The most powerful secretary of state of the postwar era, he was both celebrated and reviled. His complicated legacy still resonates in relations with China, Russia and the Middle East" (NYT).
With an eye fixed on the great power rivalry, he was often willing to be crudely Machiavellian, especially when dealing with smaller nations that he often regarded as pawns in the greater battle.
November 29, 2023
Sunrise — 7:05, 7:14.


"The contradictions of a gay man falling in genuine love with a woman — while retaining his attraction to men — are captured..."
Writes Ann Hornaday in "Bravo, Bradley Cooper: ‘Maestro’ is a grand, messy symphony of moments/The director and star of the Leonard Bernstein biopic tells the conductor’s story, and that of his wife (Carey Mulligan), with electric, sometimes scattershot verve" (WaPo).
Trump's op-ed in Newsweek: "I Will Make America Great Again for Young People."
Under Joe Biden, we are a nation in decline and rapidly losing the American Dream. But Biden's destruction of the American economy is just the beginning of his war on young people. The Radical Left has also unleashed shocking waves of violent crime and bloodshed...
If I needed to follow John McWhorter's new rule, I would think of "they" as a nickname for the person, rather than a pronoun.
"Elon Musk voiced support Tuesday for Pizzagate, the long-debunked conspiracy theory that... the Clintons and Democratic Party leaders ran a secret satanic child sex ring..."
Writes Drew Harwell, in "Elon Musk boosts Pizzagate conspiracy theory that led to D.C. gunfire/The far-right theory motivated a gunman to fire multiple rounds inside the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Northwest Washington in 2016. Musk boosted the theory to his 164 million followers anyway" (WaPo).
"Zappa prods at a ludicrous cast of early-’70s hipsters, suggesting that their sense of authenticity is based on thin visions of consumerism."
Writes Daniel Felsenthal, in "Hipsters Were Always Hypocrites. Ask Frank Zappa. Of the late musician's many records, Over-Nite Sensation best crystallized his cutting satire of our country’s blank-eyed habits" (The Atlantic).
November 28, 2023
At the Tuesday Night Café...
... please talk about whatever you want.
And, please, support this blog by entering Amazon through the Althouse Portal when you're doing any shopping. Here are some nice Carhartt mittens for women, which I bought for myself. Consider this excellent binocular pack. And this is my favorite hand soap. Using those links will send me a commission. Thanks!
"Might it make the new 'they' a little easier to handle if it were used with singular tense marking?"
I have often been asked by people over 35 or so, “Are we supposed to say ‘they want’ or ‘they wants’?” I always answer that the proper form is “they want,” but must it be?...
Under the current dispensation, “they want to trim the cat’s claws” can refer to an individual or more than one person. Context usually makes the meaning known, but surely it would make things a little clearer if we could use “they wants to trim the cat’s claws” when referring to just one person....
"Why are they debating? Presidential candidates typically do not debate people who are not themselves running for president."
The best etiquette would be to refrain from questioning the etiquette of Melania Trump's attending the funeral for Rosalynn Carter.
Some argued that in light of the disrespect Trump has repeatedly shown the Carters, the Trumps had no business attending Rosalynn’s funeral. Others felt Melania was gracious for showing up. And sending Melania alone may have been the least offensive option.... There’s no clear answer here; it seems we’re going to debate whether the Trumps should be included every time there’s a high-profile political event.... Unfortunately, Emily Post doesn’t cover what to do when the former president is a boorish insurrectionist.
You say "it seems we’re going to debate" as if you're some idle onlooker. You're choosing to debate. You could have skipped the debate when the "high-profile political event" is a funeral for a First Lady.
Melania Trump joins Michelle Obama, Vice President Harris, Second Gentleman Emhoff, Laura Bush, the Clintons, President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden at Rosalynn Carter's tribute service. pic.twitter.com/044xifAtZY
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) November 28, 2023
"I have that disorder where when people make noises it hurts me. Like at the movies? That loud popcorn chewing..."
"With political sexual fetishes, Republicans and Democrats are reduced to caricatured sexual imagery: the macho posturing of Republican politicians..."
I'm trying to read this Washington Post article: "Does a forced ‘vote’ for Trump sound kinky? There’s a dominatrix for that. Being ordered to cross the political aisle is fueling fantasies in the world of sexual fetishes."
"So, if you want to be real, tell us what privileges you have received being Jewish?"
Stuart Rojstaczer gives a brilliant answer (TikTok video):
"I was quite sheltered culturally. My parents listened to almost only classical music, there was no TV, we almost never went to see movies."
"The detour took Easler and her family onto a gravel road that eventually disappeared into a bumpy dirt trail."
"The antagonisms between red states and blue cities are all the more notable because the urban areas in the crosshairs are mostly majority-minority..."
"I love that they became friends because they both played Vegas and neither wanted to cheat on their wives."
“What’s so different about them is Bob was a real writer. He wrote those routines, which were, like, one-man sketches. . . . Don came from working really hard playing lounges and strip clubs, figuring out how to do crowd work, doing multiple shows a night into the wee hours in Vegas. Bob just got huge immediately..... [Don] came from a time when his theory was, It’s O.K. to make fun of people as long as you make fun of all of them,” Apatow explained....
The New Yorker writer, Bruce Handy, quips: "Think of it as a very old-school version of D.E.I."
"Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2023 is authentic.... A high-volume lookup most years, authentic saw a substantial increase in 2023..."
They call attention to a headline I hadn't noticed and don't feel I even need to understand: "Three Ways To Tap Into Taylor Swift’s Authenticity And Build An Eras-Like Workplace."
Take Hannah Shirley, a 23-year-old tech worker who recently went viral for pointing out that her job was “like a full-time acting gig.” She tik-toked one consequence of this: feeling “drained — especially mentally, sometimes even physically — from the character that …we play at work.”...
A Taylor Swift lyric is quoted: “Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism? Like some kind of congressman?”
November 27, 2023
At the Monday Night Café...
"TikTok Live is an especially chaotic section of the app, where people work nonstop to keep the audience’s attention."
"This is the uncomfortable equilibrium the market finds itself in today. Nobody’s selling because nobody’s buying."
From "It Will Never Be a Good Time to Buy a House/Maybe in 2030?" (The Atlantic).
Where is the courage? Where is the leadership?
"Could President Biden and Donald J. Trump really be locked in a close race among young voters — a group Democrats typically carry by double digits...?"
"Try 'racial justice.'"
"For some strange reason, I always feel incredibly sleepy when I'm dreaming."
An ambiguous "ought" in The New Yorker's "Why Trump’s Trials Should Be on TV."
I agree that the trials should be televised, as I wrote in "The ACLU sides with Trump: The gag order is unconstitutional" (October 26, 2023) and — quoting Trump's lawyers — "The prosecution wishes to continue this travesty in darkness. President Trump calls for sunlight" (November 11, 2023).
There is apprehension about what [Trump] might say, and what his supporters might then do if they heed him.... Yet to believe that allowing the country to watch as Trump takes the stand would be more of a threat to the Republic than it would be to his defense is to accept his own myths about himself. The evidence against Trump ought to stand up to scrutiny far better than he will. Everybody should see that. Trump isn’t camera-shy; prosecutors have no reason to be, either.
Now, I know very well which of 2 possible meanings of "ought" Sorkin intended.
November 26, 2023
Sunrise — 7:03.

"We love what we take care of, and we take care of what we love. Instead of groaning at the task of treating my cast-iron skillet..."
"What would life beyond Earth mean for Christians?"
There are 5 subquestions, but let me focus on one: "Would meeting aliens change our understanding of the cross?" ("At the core of Christianity is the death of the incarnate Christ on a Roman cross, bringing redemption for humans. Is redemption unique to Earth?")
Haarsma identifies 4 theories:
"For SETI experts, two arguments grounded in science bolster the conjecture that aliens are surely out there somewhere: Big Numbers and the Copernican principle."
Writes Joel Achenbach, in "What we actually know about aliens, according to science" (WaPo).
"Going to watch that movie 'The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming' in 1966 diverted my entire life in a wrong direction."
"The world is in a permacrisis currently with the COVID-19 aftermath, the war in Ukraine, climate change issues, political instability, the energy crisis in Europe, recession and the cost-of-living crisis."
The definition is obvious: "A situation characterized by constant and significant turmoil or instability; (now) spec. one that is widespread across a society and caused by an ongoing series of events such as war, economic recession, a pandemic disease, etc."
November 25, 2023
Sunrise — 6:50.

"For Israeli leaders, the war is 'all about eradicating and destroying Hamas... So anything less than that is not a win...'"
"He is up to his wattle in criminal indictments, and even if none land him in prison, the grinding stress and his advanced age look to be taking a toll on his mental acuity."
"The [2] pooches alone ravaged five cars, with damages estimated to cost $100,000 to $350,000...."
"Dogs destroy cars at Texas dealership, cause up to $350K in damages: video" (NY Post).
This is happening in Texas. I would have thought that in Texas, they'd just shoot the.... Oh, no. I'm afraid of offending you even by writing the phrase. They're dogs. You have to hang back and let them wreck an entire lot of cars. What is $350K in damage when Ranger and Scrappy are out there doing what they were born to do?