"[Jill] Biden is a longtime English professor who casually uses the correct group noun for starlings ('murmuration')."

"She quotes many writers here — Albert Camus, Robert Frost, Nikki Giovanni, James Salter — but the author the book recalled most vividly to me, in its careful catalog of small details, was William Carlos Williams, who in his epic poem 'Paterson' wrote 'no ideas but in things.' This tracks, because Biden acknowledges the help of Ada Calhoun, the author of [a book] about Frank O’Hara. Indeed, Biden’s description of being hustled for security reasons through the service entrance to hotels made my O’Hara stand on end, so cleanly could it be broken into stanzas, if you’ll forgive the liberty: 'right by garbage cans/ reeking of rotting room service leftovers/mixed with discarded mini shampoos/ — an odor so sour and pungent/that it almost knocks you down.'"

So writes Alexandra Jacobs in "Jill Biden’s New Memoir Shows Off a Sharp Eye, if Not a Sharp Elbow/Beyond a few pointed digs at her husband’s successor, 'View From the East Wing' largely sticks to the head-spinning details of first lady-hood" (NYT).

Speaking of "no ideas but in things," we're told that, in her new memoir, her second, Jill Biden "marvels at the perks of the office, the masses of flowers, attentive staff and fine art, such as 'Morning on the Seine, Good Weather,' the oil painting that Angela Merkel said Trump called 'my Monet.' ('Our Monet,' Biden corrects, meaning the American people’s.)"

I looked it up. Here's "Our Monet":

According to The White House Historical Association's Facebook page: "On December 4, 1963, the family of John F. Kennedy donated the painting 'A Morning on the Seine; Good Weather' to the White House collection in memory of the late president." That was 2 weeks after the assassination. I'm only noticing this painting now, because I'm reading about Jill and Donald verbalizing possessively about it. And now I feel as though I can see, in that fuzzy image, 2 profiles yelling at each other. And both look like Trump.

Oh! The derangement! An odor so sour and pungent....

ADDED: Did Trump say "my Monet"? It's hearsay — at least double hearsay. Jill Biden is asserting that Angela Merkel said that Trump said something. There's room for mishearing, misquoting, misinterpreting, and lying from Merkel (supposedly hearing Trump) and Biden (supposedly hearing Merkel) and from anyone else who's passed this statement along.

Interestingly, Trump has used the phrase "my Monet," but not to refer to an artwork by Claude Monet. Trump has called one of his golf courses "my Monet": "I have friends who buy Monets. Turnberry is my Monet and it’s far more beautiful." But that quote too is hearsay. Eric Trump wrote it in a book, it says here: "Donald Trump: Turnberry is my Monet — and it’s more beautiful/US president ‘obsessed’ with details about his golf courses in Scotland and continually makes suggestions to improve them, according to his son Eric’s book" (London Times).

Googling for more reporting of Trump's use of the phrase "my Monet," I got a good laugh:

 

I'd like to hear the "Apprentice" theme song with "Monet!" taking the place of "Money!":

I made a new tag — "pretzels" — and applied it retroactively.

This was, perhaps, the most satisfying retroactive application of a new tag I have ever done. Check it out: "pretzels."

The trick with tags is to hit the right level of generality. For example, "food" is too general. What's the point? But should there be a tag for every food that happens to play a role in a blog post? Pretzels came up in the first post today. So did crackers. I already had a "crackers" tag — I love crackers — and it felt like the right time to start a "pretzels" tag.

The retroactive application of a tag is a bit of a chore, but it's relatively easy when you have a distinctive word to search for, but it's so rewarding to turn up a lot of varied posts, which is what happened this time. 

There was the story of a disastrous crowd crush in 1896 in which a promise of pretzels played a role.

"German Chancellor Angela Merkel considers it 'problematic' that Twitter would toss President Trump off its social media platform..."

"'This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators — not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms,' Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin. 'Seen from this angle, the chancellor considers it problematic that the accounts of the U.S. president have now been permanently blocked,' he added."

The NY Post reports.

Many American are quick to say that freedom of speech is only a right that can be asserted against government, so there's no right — or even an interest in freedom of speech — that can be asserted against a private company like Twitter. But the German Chancellor speaks of "fundamental rights."

Angela Merkel shakes disturbingly during the German national anthem.

You see her here standing next to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on a hot day in Berlin:

Afterwards, she said "Since then I have drunk at least three glasses of water – I obviously needed that and so I'm doing very well now."

The Mayo Clinic website does not list shaking as a symptom of dehydration.

About that German national anthem (from Wikipedia):

The song is also well known by the beginning and refrain of the first stanza, "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles"... but this has never been its title. The line "Germany, Germany above all" originally meant that the most important goal of 19th-century German liberal revolutionaries should be a unified Germany which would overcome loyalties to the local kingdoms, principalities, duchies and palatines (Kleinstaaterei) of then-fragmented Germany.

The melody of the "Deutschlandlied" was written by Joseph Haydn in 1797 to provide music to the poem "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser" (English: "God save Franz the Emperor") by Lorenz Leopold Haschka... Haydn's work is sometimes called the "Emperor's Hymn". It is often used as the musical basis for the hymnal "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken".

Losing physical control during the German national anthem got me thinking about the last scene in "Dr. Strangelove."

That said, I hope Angela is doing fine, I think Haydn wrote a beautiful song, and I have participated in the singing of "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken" many times.

Hand gestures — Angela Merkel and Donald Trump.

I'm closing in on the hands from one photograph. It has the caption "President Trump met with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday," and is by Doug Mills at the NYT, where it is used to illustrate a Michelle Goldberg column with the kind of title that designed to hook someone who isn't me,  "‘Evil Has Won’/Pro-American Germans feel betrayed":





I know the NYT selected this picture, and I assume the stark hand positions were part of why it was chosen. But these look like positions that were locked into place and held, so I think we can look at them as meaningful. My interpretation:

Merkel: Here's my penis.

Trump: Here's my vagina. Aim it right here, Angela.

As promised, I read the transcript of the January 28th phone conversation between Trump and the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Trumbull.

I don't approve of the publication of these transcripts, but since they are out there, I wanted to be sure I knew what was in them so that I wouldn't be affected by distortions in what is and isn't reported elsewhere. My discussion of the conversation between Trump and the Mexican President is here. So now let's look at the conversation with Turnbull, which is all about the agreement President Obama made with respect to refuges held in prisons on Nauru and Manus Island after they attempted to enter Australia by boat.

As Turnbull makes clear, Australia has a hardcore policy rejecting anyone who arrives by boat. As Trump makes clear, he hates the agreement but feels compelled to follow it. Turnbull attempts to persuade Trump to see that it's a deal that Trump himself should want to endorse, and Trump seems irritated that Turnbull would even attempt to sell that to him. So Turnbull switches to arguing that the deal really isn't so bad. This rubs Trump the wrong way, and even without audio, I hear Trump displaying anger at Turnbull for not just admitting it's a crappy deal and being thankful that the deal will be followed. Maybe Trump is putting on a show. I can't tell. But Trump is demonstrative and Turnbull seems (in writing, at least) to keep his cool while pushing the points that are obviously irking Trump. It's not a good relationship.

That's my quick take. Click for my 14-point summary with quotes.

Who barged where in the G20 photograph?

Clearly (and hilariously) it was Macron:



French President Emmanuel Macron goes way out of his way, jostling past numerous world leaders to get to stand next to Donald Trump. Angela Merkel, planted in the center front row, actively reaches out to him, but he's dead set on task and makes it to the extreme right, where Donald Trump had positioned himself.

But look how Newsweek presents the same photo op: "IN G20 PHOTO, TRUMP COULDN’T SHOVE HIS WAY TO THE FRONT AND CENTER OF WORLD LEADERS." The video there shows an earlier point in the assembling on the risers, but it's easy to see that Trump makes no attempt to get to the front and center position. He steps calmly to the end position and casually speaks to a few people. He does nothing that makes it seem as though he wants to be in the center, and he certain doesn't engage in any shoving. It's Macron that actively moves through the crowd (and "shove" would be the wrong word even for what Macron is doing).

I'm imagining how Newsweek would defend itself against the charge that this is fake news: Trump didn't shove his way to the front and center, because he couldn't. He would've if he could've. Since he didn't, that means he couldn't, so we reported that he couldn't.

That's not a logical defense, of course. It contains a glaring false premise. But it might work for hardcore Trump haters, who are deranged into thinking they are seeing the deranged mind of Donald Trump. Oh, man, he so needs to be in the center of everything, him with his narcissistic personality disorder. We need to move on him with the 25th Amendment before the world explodes.

IN THE COMMENTS: Laslo Spatula writes: "Doesn't matter where trump is standing. He can drink their milkshakes from any location in the room." (Milkshake meme discussed yesterday here.)

ADDED: According to this AP report, the positions were all predetermined by rules that put all the government leaders in the front row and, within that row, arranged them by senority.

Trump wound up on one of the outer edges, between Indonesian President Joko Widodo and French President Emmanuel Macron, who has even less seniority than Trump does after being elected in May. Trump took office in January.

There is a reference to an photo op in May (among NATO leaders) in which "Trump put his right hand on the right arm of Montenegro Prime Minister Dusko Markovic and thrust himself ahead as NATO leaders walked inside the alliance's new headquarters and prepared for a group photo." Newsweek didn't refer to that earlier incident, but it could have attempted to justify saying "Trump couldn't shove his way to the front." He "thrust" (shoved?) his way to the front in the past, but this time set rules eliminated the shoving option. Here's the Trump vs. Markovic video:



What do you think? Shoving? Thrusting?

Well? What did Trump do to Dusko Markovic?

He shoved.

He thrusted.

He did some firm but gentle repositioning.

He carefully and respectfully maintained a clear path for himself.

Dusko received a desirable, memorable, delicious clasp from the most powerful man in the world.

pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: Poll results:

"Mansplaining, G20 style."

Mansplaining, G20 style. Watch Angela Merkel’s eye-roll. pic.twitter.com/PXEI0WxyYH

— SimonNRicketts (@SimonNRicketts) July 7, 2017

"One can’t help but wonder what Trogneux’s ex-husband must make of the double freak occurrence of losing his wife to a teen-ager, only to have him turn out, decades later, to be the... Président de la République."

"Her elder daughter, Laurence, was in Macron’s class.... [W]hen Macron’s parents heard about the affair, they initially thought their son was seeing Laurence. 'You don’t understand, you already have your life,' Macron’s mother reportedly told a tearful Trogneux, who refused to promise to break off the affair. 'He won’t have children!' He has no biological children.... [Now that] he is elected, the leaders of France, Germany, and the U.K. will have zero biological children among them. (Angela Merkel has two stepsons; Theresa May and her husband of thirty-six years were unable to have children. May spoke about the pain of that realization after a political rival suggested that she had more of a stake in the future than May by virtue of being a mother.)"

From "Emmanuel Macron and the Modern Family," by Lauren Collins (in The New Yorker).

ADDED: The Prime Minister of Italy,Paolo Gentiloni, 62, also has no children, so "With Macron, the leaders of Europe's 4 biggest economies have a combined 0 biological children."

President Trump, by contrast, has 5 children, the youngest of whom is named Barron, which is pronounced the same as "barren."  (I was going to say Trump is not barren, but "barren" is a word that applies only to women, and interestingly enough, the etymology is, according to the OED,  based on the root bar which means "man, male," so that what when you say a woman is "barren," it means "male-like.")

"I hope he doesn't give her a shoulder rub."

Says Meade when I say President Trump and Angela Merkel are about to hold a press conference.

Watch it here.

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade said:

Next best thing to a shoulder rub: commiseration over being wire tapped by Obama.

That was priceless! I'll bet many people had forgotten that Obama wiretapped Merkel. For Trump to slip in that reference so slyly with Merkel standing right there — that goes on the historical highlight reel of the Trump presidency. Watch Merkel's face as she realizes what he's saying and reacts.



ALSO: Here's the reference video for Meade's joke in the post title:

"A senior foreign German politician today blamed the atrocity on 'institutional political correctness', arguing that Amri would not have been free to act if police had enforced the law."

Anis Amri, the suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack, was a known ISIS supporter who had been arrested 3 times, denied asylum and was subject to deportation...

But under a peculiarity of the German asylum system he was granted a 'Duldung' or toleration papers allowing him to stay for unknown reasons.

The NYT invites us to consider Angela Merkel's point of view:

Virtually alone among her peers, she welcomed into her country roughly a million migrants who flooded across Europe’s borders. Having made that fateful decision, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany now faces what nearly all here are calling the toughest passage of her 11 years in power, after a terrorist attack on Monday in Berlin left 12 people dead.....

With right-wing populism on the rise across Europe, Ms. Merkel has been seen as a bulwark against illiberal democracy....

“This is even more worrying than terrorism, strange though that may sound,” said Jacqueline Boysen, a biographer of Ms. Merkel who has known her since the 1990s. “Terrorism is terrible and frightening, but our political future is so uncertain.”

"If she decides the day after tomorrow that Mr. Böhmermann has exercised his right to satire... she risks offending a highly sensitive president who is trampling press freedom in his own country."

"But if she authorizes a court prosecution, there will be a powerful outcry inside Germany... It will be seen as a gesture of submission to the Turkish president.... We must be prepared for a new type of conflict which can arise in a radical digital media world... What is accepted in one cultural circle can be seen as a terrible insult in others."

Said the German media expert Bernhard Pörksen referring to German Chancellor Angela Merkel who feels pressure from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to authorize the prosecution of Jan Böhmermann, who published a poem criticizing Erdogan.

We were talking the other day about a video on a German TV show that mocked Erdogan and that Erdogan sought to suppress. Böhmermann went out of his way to be more offensive and openly stated that the video wasn't offensive enough.

The video mockery Turkey's president Erdogan wants taken down from the internet.

I wouldn't have noticed that but for Ergogan's effort at suppression. The video comes from a German TV show, extra3. Note the mockery of Angela Merkel in the video.

Christiane Wirtz, a spokeswoman for Ms. Merkel, confirmed that the German ambassador to Ankara, Martin Erdmann, had been summoned on March 22 over the video.... German officials would not confirm reports that the Turkish side had requested that the video be taken down from the Internet.

But [Sawsan Chebli, a spokeswoman for Germany’s Foreign Ministr] said the ambassador and a deputy foreign minister, who called his Turkish counterpart on Tuesday, had “made clear that political satire in Germany is, of course, protected and therefore there is neither a necessity, nor a possibility, for the government to take action.”

The show’s reaction to the dispute was tongue-in-cheek. It posted a political cartoon showing a figure resembling Mr. Erdogan brandishing a fire extinguisher at a laptop, while threatening, “Either you erase this video, or I will extinguish the Internet.”

"Bill Maher Pens Blistering Essay on Hillary as 'Charlie Brown,' Trump and Why Bernie Sanders, Socialist, Can Win."

That's a funny, meta title for an essay by Bill Maher.

He begins:

It's finally a "Bill Maher election." And by that I mean it's a year of new rules — to borrow from Real Time — largely rewritten by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. No one thought a politician could survive, much less stay in the lead for as long as Trump has, based on a campaign of braggadocio and utter contempt for political correctness. But the younger generation is leading a movement to prize authenticity above all. Trump is a petulant child, but at least that's real, they seem to be saying. Bernie, too, is as real as real gets. (So real he doesn't even own a comb.)...

ADDED: You might not have wanted to wade through that much Bill Maher. It's in rant mode, obviously, necessarily. It's Bill Maher. Political comedians seem to need to use this mode. So let me pull out the part where he pretty much agrees with Trump — after a few disclaimers — on the subject of the Syrian refugees:

Forty countries in the world have some version of Sharia law. I just don't understand how liberals who fought the battle for civil rights in the '60s, fought against apartheid in the '80s, can then just simply ignore Sharia law in 40 countries. Apartheid was only in one. I am not anti-Muslim and never have been: I am anti-bad ideas. Killing cartoonists and apostates, these are terrible ideas and practices, and it would be lovely to think that they were confined only to terrorists. They unfortunately are not.

Not to be an "I told ya so," but when the Syrian refugee crisis happened, I said, "Certainly our hearts go out to these refugees, but the answer can't be to empty Syria and every other country in the Middle East where people live under repressive conditions and bring them all to Europe." Now Sweden is sending 80,000 refugees back and German Chancellor Angela Merkel is saying, "Hey, when we said you could come here, we didn't mean permanently."

Rather than letting them settle in Germany, these millions of young Muslim men, how about let's train them to go back and fight for their own country? That’s another one of my issues — the soft bigotry of low expectations. How come Saudi Arabia didn't take in any Syrian refugees? I would think they’d fit in there a little more than in Cologne. Why don't they fight their own battles? Why are Muslim armies so useless against ISIS? ISIS isn't 10 feet tall. There are 20,000 or 30,000 of them. The countries surrounding ISIS have armies totaling 5 million people. So why do we have to be the ones leading the fight? Or be in the fight at all?

So no, Donald Trump is not right — but he will win the election if the American people have to choose between his demagoguery and a party that won't even say the words "Islamic terrorism." I think the Democrats could lose on that issue alone, especially if there's another attack.

And by the way — as Trump says when he segues to his next thought — doesn't Maher's flow of ideas resemble Trump's approach to campaign oration. Trump — who's been on TV a lot — does comedy some of the time... much of the time. He has great comic timing, and part of the timing is choosing when to dip into comedy, when to go all in and when to be ambiguously serio-comic. People who like him go with the flow and enjoy it. Maybe they enjoy the daring things he gets to say, maybe they're comfortable with ambiguity, and maybe they agree with even the most extreme things. It's complicated. It's unexpected. It's entertainment. Those who hate Trump have a lower panic point: The President can't be a comedian! Or they don't like Trump's political bent, wouldn't like it even if the style was conventional, and they hate to see the conservative side finding a way to win. 

About that Angela Merkel person-of-the-year Time Magazine cover....

Time's Person of the Year: Angela Merkel.

"In a year where world leaders were tested all through the year, no one was tested like she was...."

I thought it would be Donald Trump, but as long as we're talking about Germany, let me pass on something I saw in the sidebar at the link (which goes to Politico): "Trump not bothered by comparisons to Hitler."

Question: "Why is Barack Obama drinking beer at 11am?"

Answer: He's in Bavaria, acting Bavarian.

Angela Merkel... treated him to a full Bavarian breakfast of white sausages, pretzels and foaming lager... Bavarians don’t down a quick pint before heading to the office every morning. It originates in Frühschoppen — a local tradition of meeting for a drink late in the morning on Sundays and holidays. According to Bavarian custom, the sausages cannot be eaten after 12 noon, because no preservatives are used and they are made fresh every day. Therefore those who wish to wash their sausages down with a beer must get supping before that time. The local saying is that the sausages must not be allowed to hear the church bells chime noon.

I have too many Obama tags already and it's too late in The Story of Barack Obama to make an "Obama eats food" tag, so I'm just going with the closest thing I've got. It begins with "Obama eats..." anyway. Too bad I don't have "Obama drinks beer." There was that famous "beer summit" that maybe half of the people have forgotten by now. That would have been the time to create an "Obama drinks beer" tag. So I'm going with "Obama and drugs." Close enough, no?

"Russia’s bizarre proposal to condemn West Germany’s 1989 ‘annexation’ of East Germany."

Is it bizarre?

[W]hile the events it concerns may be long in the past, the motivation is likely the present. The plan was originally put forward by Nikolay Ivanov, a Communist Party lawmaker, who has argued that the reunification of Germany was insufficiently democratic. "Unlike Crimea, a referendum was not conducted in the German Democratic Republic," Ivanov was quoted as saying, referring to the region of Ukraine that broke away to join Russia last year after a disputed referendum.

Russia and Germany have an important, if complicated, relationship. Chancellor Angela Merkel is perhaps the closest Western leader to Putin – she grew up in East Germany, and – like Putin, who served with the KGB in Dresden – can speak both German and Russian. However, Merkel has been a prominent voice supporting sanctions on Russia after actions in Ukraine, and the relationship has been strained. Merkel famously told President Obama that the Russian leader was living "in another world."

"More than three million people have taken part in unity marches across France after 17 people died during three days of deadly attacks in Paris."

"Up to 1.6m are estimated to have taken to the streets of the French capital. More than 40 world leaders joined the start of the Paris march, linking arms in an act of solidarity."

World leaders, including British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, EU President Donald Tusk, and Jordan's King Abdullah II joined the beginning of the Paris march.

"Paris is the capital of the world today," French leader Francois Hollande said.

No leaders from the United States? That's weird.

ADDED: Drudge, linking to the Daily News (which points out that Eric Holder was in Paris):



AND: I suspect that Holder (and other American politicians) don't want to seem to be supporting what might be perceived as hate speech.

"The Chancellor thinks Putin believes that we’re decadent, we’re gay, we have women with beards..."

"That it’s a strong Russia of real men versus the decadent West that’s too pampered, too spoiled, to stand up for their beliefs if it costs them one per cent of their standard of living. That’s his wager. We have to prove it’s not true."

Said an unnamed German official quoted in the New Yorker article "The Quiet German/The astonishing rise of Angela Merkel, the most powerful woman in the world."

As for what Merkel thinks of American Presidents:

“She does not really think Obama is a helpful partner,” Torsten Krauel, a senior writer for Die Welt, said. “She thinks he is a professor, a loner, unable to build coalitions.” Merkel’s relationship with Bush was much warmer than hers with Obama, the longtime political associate said. A demonstrative man like Bush sparks a response, whereas Obama and Merkel are like “two hit men in the same room. They don’t have to talk—both are quiet, both are killers.”

A demonstrative man like Bush sparks a response... Hmm... time to reexamine the old video:



She's smiling in the end, something you can really see in the longer video here, at Kos, where the assertion is that the gesture is "most unwelcome." How do we know?! I mean, I know you're not supposed to touch people unless you know it is welcome, but that doesn't mean we know it's not welcome.