A walk down in the meadow.

There are different types of flowers:



Don't eat the water hemlock!



Checking back in on the blog....



Listen to what Beth wrote: "Shhh, Meade. People are going to think you're a fictional character. I knew it as soon as I saw that picture of him on a porch, reading the paper. Hey, I have that same man at home!" (Well, maybe Beth just has the same model coin-operated boy....)

What's in that container? Store-bought wild blueberries?

No! Blackberries! We went looking for ripe blackberries...



... and we found what we were looking for.

"Gay men had symmetrical brains like those of straight women, and homosexual women had slightly asymmetrical brains like those of heterosexual men."

A provocative study — but at least women can feel good about our brains. We're symmetrical. Nah nah.

IN THE COMMENTS: Beth said:

EnigmatiCore beat me to it: Althouse, what's up with that "women can feel good about our brains" thing? Care to qualify it?

Oh, I fell afoul of the code of political correctness! Of course, I can casually mock men and jokingly express female superiority, but I bumbled into making fun of lesbians! And I said "we women" in a way that excluded lesbians. Now, I'm in trouble.

"I had the thought last week that this entire thing is charade designed to sell a book."

Yeah, my thought too. That's why I didn't blog about "My Personal Credit Crisis" — by Edmund L. Andrews — when I read it last week. And it's a long article. It's very rare that I go all the way through a long article and refrain from blogging it. Normally, I taste things, and the decision to consume them in full is automatically a decision to blog them. But I felt aggressively hostile to giving Andrews any attention. It was a readable article. I'll give him that. But I wanted to smack him.

AND: Neo-Neocon wants to smack him too. In the comments, Beth said...

I read this with disbelief. This guy, after child support, was bringing home less than $3k a month, and his fiancee at the time had no job at all, and it made sense to borrow HALF A MILLION BUCKS???? He keeps saying how easy it was to borrow it, but until months after the bills actually start coming in, he never thought about how hard it would be to pay back. That's the kind of thinking I've seen in friends with manic depression, in a manic phase.

It seemed to me that the guy did whatever he could get away with. And now he writes a confessional memoir about his shamelessness with the NYT as his springboard.

"Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson stand on the railroad tracks at the corner of Royal and Press Streets..."

"... where in June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy was arrested after boarding a train designated for whites only."

On any other day in 1892, Plessy could have ridden in the car restricted to white passengers without notice. According to the parlance of the time, he was classified "7/8 white."

In order to pose a clear test to the state's 1890 separate-car law, the Citizens' Committee in advance notified the railroad — which had opposed the law because it required adding more cars to its trains.

On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket for the commuter train that ran to Covington, sat down in the car for white riders only and the conductor asked whether he was a colored man.... The committee also hired a private detective with arrest powers to take Plessy off the train at Press and Royal streets, to ensure that he was charged with violating the state's separate-car law.

Everything the committee plotted went as planned — except for the final court decision, in 1896. By then the composition of the U.S. Supreme Court had gained a more segregationist tilt, and the committee knew it would likely lose. But it chose to press the cause anyway.... "It was a matter of honor for them, that they fight this to the very end."

(Thanks to our regular commenter Beth for emailing me that link.)

To all my commenters, the best commenters in the blogosphere.

Yesterday, the day I saw "The Curious Life of Benjamin Button" and wrote that post, I conked out early.

Oh, I don't know if it was from the movie or from the pizza and one glass of wine I had afterward or just from being somewhat old. Most of the people in the movie audience were old, so old, that when Cate Blanchett reassured the getting-younger Benjamin by saying that we all wear diapers in the end, and the chuckle from the audience was unnervingly warm, I had to speculate that there was a high Depends-to-butt ratio in the theater at that very moment. And who knows? Perhaps young soda-swillers wear Depends to the movies, especially to 3-hour extravaganzas like "Benjamin Button." Especially with all that water imagery:

[W]ater is often seen as a symbol for birth/re-birth, and [I] thought they used it well. Spoilers: The dad nearly throws Pitt in the water in the beginning, Pitt takes the dad to sit by the water, Tilda Swinton swims the English Channel, all of the work Pitt does on the boat and the sailing, Daisy takes up swimming after her injury, Hurricane Katrina...anything else?)

And Benjamin fighting the Nazis at sea. Or should I say Ben or Ben-yah-meen?

Here's a weird-ass quirk of mine: For years now, anywhere and everywhere I see the name "Benjamin" used in a narrative (especially a grand, old one) I substitute plain old "Ben." Amazing, how well that works and the perspective it brings.

I studied Arabic one summer during college, and there was a white guy in the program named Benjamin who insisted we all call him Ben-yah-meen. That experience, I think, has much the same effect on Benjamin perspective.

The quote in that first block is from Zachary Paul Sire in the comments. The 2 in the second block are from reader_iam and Freeman Hunt.

See? This post is a tribute to all the commenters who kept an interesting conversation going all night on that thread that I conked out after writing. In the morning, it's my habit to reach for my iPhone before so much as sitting up in bed. Supine, I check the news, mostly to assure myself that nothing terrible happened during the hours when I wasn't paying attention. (The Yellowstone caldera has not exploded, despite the recent, strange swarm of earthquakes.) Then, I read blog comments for a while. Last night's post had accumulated 73 comments. The second one was from me, right before I fell asleep. I was responding to the first comment, from Zachary Paul Sire, who wanted to know if I liked the movie, a matter I'd considered beside the point of the post. I answered:

It was okay. It would have been much better if it were tightened up... and livened up. Like many high-budget, high-aspiration movies of today, it was embalmed. Its "I have always loved you" theme was very conventional, and I never felt much real passion between the 2 lead actors. And neither of them ever said anything clever. But there were some excellent special effects in aging and youthening Pitt and Blanchett, and there were some nice moments. Where to cut? You can cut all whole old dying woman and her daughter scenes, as far as I'm concerned. Reminded me of "Titanic," bringing in an old, old woman to tell the story of her big love to her daughter.

71 comments ensued. I can't reprint them all. But I intend to frontpage much more than usual this morning.

Chuck b. said:

I always enjoy the Althousian disdain for sentimentality (or is it a midwesterner's disdain? or maybe it's just very lawyerly), although I myself enjoy many sentimental films.

Actually, I'm not very good at recognizing sentimentality when I see it. I just let myself get played.

... although I don't cry as much during commercials and sentimental television things as much as Althouse does. Actually, that's interesting. A'house report tearage not infrequently. Does that have something to do with her negative reactions toward...ineffective sentimentality?

Am I midwestern? The most midwestern thing about me is that my mother grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Second is: I went to college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Third: I've taught at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, Wisconsin since 1984 (since I was 33 years old). So: 1. My formative years were not spent in the midwest, and 2. My time in the midwest has entirely been in these 2 university towns that don't really represent the region.

As for crying and sentimentality... 1. I might cry about something sentimental the way I might sneeze in the presence of dusty black pepper. It doesn't mean I admire the cause of the reflex. Quite the opposite. 2. I am cold to some emotional manipulations and susceptible to others. I might get judgmental and resist everything, but I might indulge and enjoy the easily won emotions of sentimentality. There is some good sentimentality. "The Bill Cosby Show" always made me cry. (And I do mean "The Bill Cosby Show," not "The Cosby Show," which I never watched.) 3. There are some things I regard as real art. I keep these separate, whether they provoke crying or not. The Kubrick movie "Lolita" caused me to cry profusely, but only after it was over, when I was trying to talk about it. That meant something.

Palladian said:

["Ben Button" s]ounds like a miserable Oscar-bait remake of "Big".

"Big" was much more fun, but like "Big," it gave us a chance to see an adult woman in love with a little boy — without all that nasty guilt that comes from awareness that we are witnessing pedophilia. Unlike "Big," it gave us a chance to see an old man in love with a little girl. Ah, but he's only 7! He's her age. And when an old woman tells him he should be ashamed of himself, we sympathize with the old man. I mean the little boy. And I bet pedophiliac old men believe that at heart they too are little boys.

And Brad Pit and Cate Blanchett? Can there be two more overexposed, boring actors on the planet?

Zachary Paul Sire said:

I love Cate Blanchett (anyone seen "Notes On A Scandal"? Now that's a good movie)...but Brad Pitt has never, ever been interesting to me. I can't think of one movie he's been in that I've enjoyed. Maybe "12 Monkeys," but that's because he was a supporting character. He and Cate, like Althouse said, had absolutely no passion or believability. Lifeless. Boring.

I love Brad in "12 Monkeys." Also in "Fight Club." In fact, I have a lot of respect for Brad Pitt. He picks some artistic projects, and he doesn't just rely on his pretty face — though perhaps he uglifies himself in part for the purpose of sending the message that he is so gorgeous that even uglified he's divine. In "Ben Button," he puts on that old age makeup, but then he emerges from it, so that Brad Pittifulness seems astoundingly new again. He then gets to progress to his "Thelma and Louise" level of insane male beauty. There's a scene in "Button" where he returns to the (old) Cate Blanchett in this form and she exclaims "You're perfect!" and I wanted her to say "Oh my God! You're Brad Pitt!"

Titus said:

For the most part I hate almost every movie that comes out because I find them too boring and too much made for "normal America". I also hate sitting in a movie theater for two hours with other people....

On a seperate [sic] note I have a fear of the dentist. I am only able to go once a year because I literally freak out 24 hours before I go. I have to be sedated, gased and anything else to go. I go every year in January but I now have a toothache so I have to go tomorrow and I am freaking out....

The only good news about going to the dentist tomorrow is he gives me good drugs.

He is a big liberal. His wife works at the front desk and his dog runs around the office.

My dentist is a straight queen. Every time I go in there he shows me one of his new Yoga poses that he has just conquered.

Chuck b. said...

"My dentist is a straight queen."

I loathe heterosexual gay men. What's the phobicity for that?

My dentist is a feisty latina and I am devoted to her. As a regular flosser and non-drinker of sugary beverages, my teeth are always clean and my gums are "tight". I love it when she tells me my gums are tight. Noone else tells me that.

Beth — who lives in New Orleans, the city featured in the movie but not the Fitzgerald story — said:

The more days I am from having seen ["Ben Button"], the more little "hey, that didn't add up" moments I think of. I too could have done without the entire mother/daughter hospital plot. I kept dreading possible outcomes, and that was a distraction.

And no, there's no real chemistry between the leads. There were much more appealing relationships -- b/w Benjamin and the folks in the home, mainly. And the tugboat captain was a favorite of mine.

But I am a partisan for it still; there are lots of movies shot in New Orleans, and this one made such wonderful use of places I love. The bandstand where Daisy does her nighttime dance is one where my friends and I would perform late at night, running wild in the park as teens. Lanaux House, the setting for the Button household, was also the setting for the nasty Gallier sibling household in the 1982 version of Cat People. Overall, I just loved our streets and houses and streetcars and greenery. It all looked so good.

Chuck b. said:

I was in N'awlins once for a week, drunk the whole time. I ate every meal at Paul Prudhomme's place (spelling?!) and marvelled at the cockroaches on the sidewalk that came out when the sun went down. I walked all the way back to my hotel stepping on one cockroach after another, like stepping stones. God, what a great town.

Palladian said:

I cry at the end of "It's A Wonderful Life"....

"It's A Wonderful Life" is a perfect movie. I know that some people think it's commie propaganda and that some douchebag at the New York Times (natch) trashed it this year, but still. Brilliantly detailed, perfect performances. Sob, sob.

Zachary Paul Sire said:

I've actually never watched the entire "It's A Wonderful Life" from beginning to end. I've also never watched an entire episode of "The Simpsons" from beginning to end. Some things just don't appeal to me.

Chuck b. said...

I've never seen It's a Wonderful Life, even a little bit of it.

LoafingOaf said:

I'm also sorry I don't find life so wonderful. Will the movie change my mind? I still smile through most days, though. Life is depressing but you may as well life at it.

Sometimes I come to Althouse blog and the prof's life seems so perfect, and I've never been able to detect any terrible, or even messy, things going on beneath the surface. She's even chummy with her ex, and her sons seem way too well-adjusted. Does she keep it hidden, or is she for real? She seems so "together" I feel if I browse her blog enough it will rub off on me a little. But I do wanna determine whether she just keeps it hidden or if her having her shit so "together" is for real.

You should read what they say about me on those other blogs — where I'm a decrepit, crazy drunk. Obviously, I control the message here. But, in fact, I don't lie about myself. Even though some of my antagonists think I'm outrageously self-absorbed, I rarely reveal anything about my real-world life. Haven't you noticed? My topic selection and various opinions and attitudes may seem idiosyncratic and distinctive enough to give the impression of a window into my life. And my photographs, by physical necessity, show my point of view. But I'm not telling you about any sorrows and struggles that may afflict me. Yes, I have a job that immensely benefits me, but it is exceedingly rare for me to write about my colleagues or students. If they were giving me trouble, you wouldn't know. I'm very lucky to have 2 sons — but I'm not going to say anything bad about them, and I mostly don't write about them. And you see my occasional chumminess with my ex-husband, but we separated more than 20 years ago. You have no evidence at all of any post-1987 love affairs that I may have had and how I may have suffered.

LoafingOaf said:

Oh, well, at least Sarah Palin's life and family turned out to be a mess.

Beth said:

LoafingOaf, I'm just making a guess here, so cut me some slack if I'm offbase.

You might find life a little less depressing if you cut back on the hating, just a bit. Take Palin, for example. She's not running for anything right now. She lost. Why bother looking for a Palin thread anywhere? I know, I know; there are scores of conservatives who can't get through a day without hating on Algore or blaming Bill Clinton for today's crappy economy or holding out for Obama's super-secret African birth certificate -- but they're not good examples for you to follow.

I'm not saying you should be Mary Sunshine, but a small adjustments might be in order. If you just keep your targets of anger current, you'll cut back on a lot of unnecessary bile. And that will increase the room for a bit of wonder in your life.

See how we help each other here?

Chickenlittle said:

She's even chummy with her ex, and her sons seem way too well-adjusted. Does she keep it hidden, or is she for real?

My ex-girlfriend is chummy with my wife. She's coming to visit next weekend--with her husband. We all laugh and joke about the past.

My point is that you can choose to get past horrible hurts in the past--or not. It all depends on the parties involved (and their will to party)

Palladian said:

"Oh, well, at least Sarah Palin's life and family turned out to be a mess."

A mess? She was nominee for vice-president. She has a beautiful family. If you want a mess you should look to yourself and figure out why this woman drove you crazy, why this woman turned you from an interesting commenter to a bitter, twisted loser. Take Beth's advice, Mr Sullivan, and chill out.

Reader_iam, quoting me in the original "Ben Button" post, said:

the old story is crisp and unsentimental

Indeed.

Finally, some love for Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald.

And that's the end of the line in this paean to commenters.

Happy New Year, everybody. Let's sing "Auld Lang Syne":

"So the first Thanksgiving in America was actually held by grave robbers."

Here's the (Madison Wisconsin) Capital Times article about Thanksgiving that Rush Limbaugh is about to rage about.

IN THE COMMENTS: Beth says:

Rush Limbaugh is about to rage about something? Stop the presses.

Rush Limbaugh is about to rage about something from Madison, Wisconsin. That stops the presses at Althouse.

UPDATE: Here's the rant. Rush really struggles with the text here, because he wants to conclude that the University of Wisconsin is pushing a -- horrors! -- multicultural curriculum, but it turns out to be about the bubonic plague, not anything about the comparative values and practices of Pilgrims and Indians. He ends like this:

I know it can't be proved because of the two words "most likely." The Indians were "decimated...most likely by a disease." It can't be proven. Nobody knows. This is just a multicultural curriculum which is designed to get as many little kids as possible to question the decency and the goodness of their own country.

That last sentence comes out of nowhere. It's where he intended the rant to end up, but nothing was getting him there, so he just said it anyway. He doesn't always do that, but when he does, it's really screechingly awful.

Super Tuesday is tomorrow.

What will you be looking for?

IN THE COMMENTS: Beth answers my question from New Orleans: "Zulu coconuts. Marching bands. Hip hop brass bands. My friends in outlandish costumes. A clean public bathroom."

"It said my house is pink. I would not have a pink house, I assure you."

Says Mitt Romney. Context:

MR. RUSSERT: This was The Boston Globe back in December of '06. "As Governor Mitt Romney explores a presidential bid, he has grown outspoken in his criticism of illegal immigration. But, for a decade, the governor has used a landscaping company that relies heavily on workers like these, illegal Guatemalan immigrants, to maintain the ground surrounding his pink Colonial house." That was a year ago. A year later, The Boston Globe came back and the same company and illegal immigrants doing the same work. Did you report that company to authorities saying--a year ago--saying they're using illegal immigrants?

GOV. ROMNEY: Oh, it was, it was on the front page of The Boston Globe; a reporting was not necessary. But I have to clear up the most egregious error in that article. It said my house is pink. I would not have a pink house, I assure you. In an effort to--let me, let me describe the circumstance. And that is the very issue I just mentioned, which is we need an employment verification system in this country. I hire a landscaper to take care of my leaves and, and mow the lawn, and, and the landscaping company hires people to work for them. We're certainly not going to have an America where a homeowner is expected or even thought of going out and saying, "Gosh, I see some workers here who have an accent. I want them to bring papers so I can inspect them." As a matter of fact, I think that's against the law in this country. And so, in this case, the, the landscaper, or the contractor has a responsibility to ensure that their workers are legal.

Watch him say it here (at 5:17). He laughs. It's a joke. (Planned?) But why is it funny?

The last time we talked about the meaning of pink, it was that locker room at the University of Iowa which was painted pink to taunt or weaken the visiting team. It was subject to feminist critique:

After protesting the pink locker room at a Hawkeye home game in November, Jill Gaulding plans to file a complaint under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972...

"This [is] understood as a funny version of the slur that goes on in athletics about playing like a girl, playing like a sissy"...

"It’s based on a concept of gender hierarchy that says not only are boys and girls different, but more important it’s better to be a boy than a girl; it’s shameful to be a girl," said Gaulding, who is researching a book on cognitive bias and gender discrimination. "Anyone who’s not deeply in denial understands and acknowledges that the pink locker room taps into this very long tradition of using gender as a put-down."

So what does it mean to say I would not have a pink house, I assure you? It was a joke that he planned and inserted into the interview. He laughed to make sure you understood that it was a joke. But how are we to understand it as a joke? What is he trying to say?



IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian offers up the perfect film clip:



Glorious. I was picturing Mitt singing that song. Or maybe some Mitt impersonator on "Saturday Night Live." (I bet Giuliani would do it.)

TerriW said...

I guess he's not afraid of alienating the John Cougar Mellencamp fanbase.

Not to mention The Band.



AND: Commenter and New Orleans resident Beth thinks Mitt doesn't know that he's losing New Orleans.

Moxvox!

I'm moxvoxing tonight. Join us!

ADDED: Simulblogging being on the show. Currently, I'm on hold, but now I'm going on.

AND: I phased out during that long Ron Paul call.

AND: I got cut off. Trying to go back on!

NEXT DAY: Sorry for the dull simulblogging!

IN THE COMMENTS: Our regular commenter Beth objects to the line in the banner at Moxie's blog. ("An antidote to the mental illness known as 'liberalism.'") I defend Moxie on the ground that the line is meant to be humorous, and there's a lot of discussion about whether it's humorous, and Moxie comes by say that it is meant to be humorous and to coax Beth to a friendlier stance. (Is "stance" an unusable word this week?) Then Steve H. Graham drops in and says something impolite which is meant to piss off a feminist. Let's listen in to this after-midnight banter:

Steve H. Graham said...

Beth, honey, I think I know what you need. Some good hard lovin' from a meat-eating Republican he-man such as me. That is usually the problem when ladies act hysterical and/or hormonal.


Send a photo and I will decide if I can help you out.

12:08 AM

Beth said...

Meat-eating Steve,

I like my steak medium rare. But I bat for another team, so the rest of your generous offer must go unclaimed.

12:17 AM

Steve H. Graham said...

Beth, do not be so sure you are that type of girl. We thought my sister was that way, but it turned out she was merely outdoorsy.

My offer stands. And I do not mean anything crude by that.

12:41 AM

Beth said...

Steve, you may not know everything your sister gets up to outdoors.

1:21 AM

Palladian said...

Especially when sis goes camping in the Brokeback Valley, where the women go...

1:26 AM

Palladian said...

Oh, and Steve, I accept your offer of some of your raw, Republican meat. But I'm not as female as Beth, so... but who knows? You might just discover that you're more "that way" than "this way".

1:29 AM

Palladian said...

The preceding comments were meant to be humorous, by the way.

1:29 AM