"Arthur Miller described the voluptuous yet fragile woman he wed as 'a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes.'"

"When Miller left out his journal open to a page saying that she had embarrassed him in front of his intellectual peers and Marilyn read it, she wrote, 'I guess I have always been deeply terrified to really be someone’s wife since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really.' Like everyone else, Miller was mesmerized by his wife’s power of enchantment. 'Glamour is a bird that for dark and largely unknowable reasons decides to light on this branch rather than another,' he once wrote...."

From Maureen Dowd's new column, "Norma Jeane’s Still Got It!" (NYT).

You know what's embarrassing? 1. Writing down that your wife is embarrassing — can't you just remember it and squirm silently in your dark and unknowable mind? — and leaving your journal open to the page where she'll see it, 2. Writing "Glamour is a bird that for dark and largely unknowable reasons decides to light on this branch rather than another." Birds don't have dark reasons.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bob Boyd provides this:

"A friggin' bird will swoop down from a bough and peck your eyes out as you lie helpless and half frozen in the snow without ever having felt sorry for you." 

— Thought to be an early, rough draft of 'Self-Pity' scribbled in the margin of A Field Guide to the Dark Thoughts of North American Birds found in D.H. Lawrence's library after his death.

BY THE WAY: When I was writing this post, I wanted an illustration and asked Grok to give me an image of "a bird that for dark and largely unknowable reasons decides to light on this branch." I didn't say Arthur Miller wrote those words.

Grok gave me an image that was too dull to use, but it also added this ridiculous caption: "A solitary bird, wings half-folded in that decisive instant of landing, perches on a gnarled, ancient branch silhouetted against a brooding twilight sky. The air feels heavy with unspoken intent—shadows pool beneath the feathers like secrets, and the bird’s eye catches a glint of something ancient and unknowable. Dark pines loom in the distance, mist curls low, and the branch itself seems to have been waiting for this exact, inscrutable visitor."

So I was all: "Yeah it's purple prose isn't it? I got it from Arthur Miller."

"Many in the entertainment industry are creatives, they’re freethinkers, they’re out-of-the-box thinkers..."

"... and so, the idea that someone isn’t conventional is kind of part and parcel of how they move through the world."

Said Dr. Erica Anderson, "a clinical psychologist who specializes in helping children with gender identity issues and who is transgender herself," quoted in "Why do so many Hollywood celebs have trans or non-binary kids?" (NY Post).

These entertainment people are "freethinkers," according to Anderson, who also says, contradictorily, that "the prevailing politics are extremely progressive," so "they don’t feel safe to question an asserted identity by one of their children."

So what is it? Do they feel compelled to go along with whatever the child says — politically compelled — or are they — because of their inherent creativity — celebrating and encouraging unusual expression?

I'm seeing a mysterious merger of freedom and compulsion.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bob Boyd: "I think she means outside-the-box thinkers. Out-of-the-box usually means you don't have to do anything yourself, no assembly required." 

That's closely observed and correct. This is the case of a dying metaphor. What is this box we're talking about when we say "outside of the box"? Grok tells me the expression originated with the 9 dots puzzle:

You're an outside-the-box thinker if you realize you can connect the 9 dots with 4 lines if you go beyond what is only an imaginary box. Apply that metaphor to thinking about how to parent a child who doesn't fit the gender stereotypes associated with its physical form. That's what an outside-the-box thinkers would do. Now, compare the out-of-the-box thinker. This would be someone who has pre-determined ideas built in and really doesn't think at all.

Why can't ChatGPT write a poem praising Trump? It's too hard to make a rhyme for "orange."

We were talking about the failure of ChatGPT to write "a poem about the positive attributes of Donald Trump" (when it easily composed "a poem about the positive attributes of Joe Biden").

Most of the discussion at the link is about the problem of bias in ChatGPT. But commenter Bob Boyd — taunting "Eat your heart out, ChatGPT" — wrote his own poem:

Skin of orange 

He's just like Hitler 

Except for his hair 

And his hands are littler

Of course, being "just like Hitler" is not a "positive attribute" — in fact this is the opposite of a poem of praise — and there's still no rhyme for "orange." But there's an apt rhyme for "Hitler," and there's the push that gets us to think of the age-old problem of rhyming with "orange."

Maybe it's easier to rhyme "orange" in German. Checking the English-to-German translator, I see the German for "orange" is "orange."

There's a Wikipedia article on the word "orange" — the word, not the color, not the fruit — and it's mostly devoted to the subject of rhyming with "orange":

"Can I use 'It/It’s' as gender pronouns?"

A Quora question.

I see 2 extra problems — extra problems beyond the usual issues surrounding pronoun preferences.

First, you're requiring other people to use a word that is dehumanizing, that portrays you as a thing and not a person.  

I noticed this problem in the context of attempting to answer the question, "What's with the weird, kinda ominous music on the Barron Trump video? Sounds like the music you'd hear on a true crime documentary about the hunt for the Sheep Ranch Killers or something."

I said, "I think it's trying to say: Look, there's a duplicate Trump, and it's bigger and stranger...." I used the word "it" to convey the thinking of someone who regarded Barron Trump as not human but a monstrous thing. 

Second, you're going to force other people to get the punctuation wrong? It's? Not its? 

"This makes it postable!"

I got email this morning from Bob Boyd, aiming at commenting on last night's post about MSNBC angsting about J.D. Vance: 

Media attacks of this kind will only help Vance with voters and increase his name recognition. 

Here is a twitter thread by a guy who has a very good grasp on the evolution of the thinking of Trump's voters over the course of the last few years and he explains it concisely. For anyone interested in understanding their point of view, this is very much worth reading. 

I didn't click on that link because other emailers had already called it to my attention. I just said:

yes, i saw that it's so annoying to read in the form of a twitter thread though 

Actually, Boyd sent me a link to a "Twitter reader" version of the thread, so it actually wasn't as annoying as what I'd seen, which was a long series of tweets on Twitter. Instead of pointing that out, Boyd responded...

No matter how annoying something is, it can always be worse. 

... and sent me this:

Tucker Carlson Reading @martyrmade's Viral Thread On Why So Many Trump Supporters Have Questions About The 2020 Election & Their Distrust Of The Mainstream Media pic.twitter.com/HY6MECgd3s

— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) July 10, 2021

I responded:

thanks... this makes it postable!

"President Biden promised to usher in a golden age of bipartisan cooperation, but instead he is showing a reverse Midas touch..."

"... taking issues that once united Republicans and Democrats and making them partisan and divisive," writes Marc A. Thiessen (at WaPo).

Until Biden came along, every single covid-19 relief bill was approved with overwhelming bipartisan support in both houses.... For Biden, who promised to put his “whole soul” into uniting Republicans and Democrats, passing a bipartisan covid bill should have been a layup. I mean, Trump did it five times. But instead, the president has turned unity into division by using covid relief as a pretext to pass all sorts of liberal spending projects that have nothing to do with the pandemic....

There has long been strong support among Republican leaders for an infrastructure package of as much as $1 trillion. But instead of uniting Republicans and Democrats around a bipartisan deal, Biden is using infrastructure as a pretext to spend more tax dollars on things that have nothing to do with infrastructure. A Politico analysis of his $2.25 trillion proposal found that only $821 billion, or 37 percent, is focused on traditional infrastructure items such as transportation, electricity and Internet....

How does Biden justify the hyperpartisan start to his presidency? Just as Democrats redefined “infrastructure,” the president is now trying to redefine “bipartisanship.” Biden recently declared, “I would like . . . elected Republican support, but what I know I have now is that I have electoral support from Republican voters.”

FROM THE EMAIL: Iain writes:

The President has spent his entire career as a windsock, showing us all the direction of the prevailing winds that would keep Joe Biden in public office and in the public eye. He's always been a partisan hack, but with his own electoral interests front and center. That he is now touting division as unity and partisanship as bipartisan is a sign of either his cognitive decline and weakened independence or of his reading that this is the way the wind is blowing. Or both. Wind direction, or the perception of it, can differ if there is an obstacle between you and the wind, or something that alters the wind in a small area to appear directionally different from the actual prevailing winds. Time will tell, I suppose, which way the winds are actually blowing.

And Bob Boyd writes:

"Biden...promised to put his 'whole soul' into uniting Republicans and Democrats"

That's like promising to put a mouse turd into a double batch of oatmeal cookies.

"A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that 55% of Republicans falsely believe Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election was the result of illegal voting or rigging."

"Additionally, 60% of Republicans incorrectly agree that the election was stolen from Republican Donald Trump." 

CNN reports, aggressively inserting the view that the people who were polled are wrong. I believe that's a very unusual way to report an opinion poll, with insistence that the opinion is wrong and apart from any factual reporting that makes it perfectly obvious that the opinion is mistaken. 

This displays a desperate fear of the opinion, and I don't think it does much good. The urge to stamp the opinion out will tend to make those who hold it grip more tightly: What are they afraid of? Are they trying to get me to move on, telling me there's nothing to see here?

CNN continues:

What is perfectly clear, however, is that Republicans' lack of faith in our current election infrastructure is a direct result of Trump's historic efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 results.

It's "perfectly clear" why people have this opinion? This is a news article, reporting a poll, and it's making an absolute assertion about why human beings believe what they do. That doesn't inspire confidence. It makes people suspicious, perhaps paranoid. 

FROM THE EMAIL: Cheryl writes: 

“Election infrastructure...” 

Seems like that word is being softened up to mean anything they want it to mean. Wonder why. 

Good catch. I'll boldface the word in the quoted text above. Cheryl's right. There's been a lot of talk lately from Democrats around the word "infrastructure." I was just saying: "It's a propaganda word to the core."

AND: Temujin emails:

"At the 66-acre site, groups of beige trailers encircle a giant white dining tent, a soccer field and a basketball court."

"There is a bright blue hospital tent with white bunk beds inside. A legal services trailer has the Spanish word 'Bienvenidos,' or welcome, on a banner on its roof. There are trailers for classrooms, a barber shop, a hair salon. The facility has its own ambulances and firetrucks, as well as its own water supply.... he most colorful trailer is at the entryway, where flowers, butterflies and handmade posters still hang on its walls...." 

From "First migrant facility for children opens under Biden" (WaPo). 

I wonder how those sentences would have been written if this "facility" had opened under Trump. 

I'll just list some words in the order that they would be most likely to be deleted/replaced if Trump were President when this place opened: butterflies, encircle, bienvenidos, flowers, handmade, colorful, welcome, bright, salon, basketball, soccer,  blue, beige, firetrucks, facility, classrooms, barber shop, white, banner....   

My favorite of those words is "encircle." They're talking about beige trailers. C'mon, beige trailers, let's form a big happy circle around the giant white dining tent!

IN THE COMMENTS: Bob Boyd accepts the challenge to rewrite the passage as it would have been written if Trump were President:

Crowded into less than 70 acres, dusty trailers huddle around a military style mess tent, a few basketball hoops and what we were told is a soccer field. There is an ominous, blue medical tent crammed with narrow, sterile bunk beds of the type one associates with mental wards of the last century. A legal services trailer with a banner on its roof reads 'Bienvenidos,' or welcome, an irony that could hardly be lost on those kept here away from family, friends and the promise of America. In a half-hearted gesture towards the basic needs of its young inmates, trailers never designed for the job have been pressed into service as makeshift classrooms, a barber shop and a hair salon. A grim-looking ambulance and firetrucks stand ready in recognition of the inevitable. The camp's water trickles reluctantly from hurriedly drilled, shallow wells. Standing out in this largely beige world, one trailer near the entryway has been ham-handedly decorated with cheap posters featuring butterflies and flowers, their once bright colors fading rapidly under the glaring sun.

It will be hard for the WaPo "fact checker" to give 4 Pinocchios to Joe Biden. He has to back off one Pinocchio because... well, why exactly?

Here's Biden repeatedly asserting that "he's traveled 17,000 miles with Xi Jingping": 

 

Biden is making a lot of misstatements of fact. The WaPo fact checker, Glenn Kessler, writes:

During his recent town hall on CNN, President Biden made a number of mistaken claims and assertions. He suggested racehorse owners receive tax breaks worth $9 billion, almost enough to pay for free attendance at community college — a claim that left tax experts scratching their heads. He said that the $7.25 minimum wage set in 2009 would be worth $20 if indexed for inflation, a statement that only makes sense if you are measuring from 1968. He wrongly stated that “vast majority” of undocumented immigrants were not Hispanic.

No Pinocchios assigned for any of that. It's all so obviously wrong that maybe it's not worth bothering to investigate. But Kessler's approach in these columns is, I think, to isolate one thing and figure out where it stands on the continuum from utter truth to bald-faced lie. Here, he's chosen the 17,000 with Xi Jingping assertion. 

The first time Kessler heard it, he says, it "seemed like a typical Biden malaprop." See? Biden gets graded on a curve. Unlike Trump, whose misstatements were judged against a stereotype that he's a huge liar, Biden gets the benefit of a presumption that he's always getting words wrong — as though it's some sort of disability, like his stuttering, and we ought to be charitable.

But Biden has repeated the assertion, as you see in the video clip, so the standard charitable allowance for the idiosyncrasies of the Biden brain was hard to use, and the fact checker has to fact-check at least some of the new President's statements. The feast on Trump is over, and the fact-checking enterprise must go on or at least seem to go on.

Here's Kessler:

If Trump knew there was a plan to storm the Capitol building, then his speech to the crowd was an incitement, even though he never told the crowd to commit any act of violence.

2 days ago, I read Trump's speech looking for any language that could support the claim that he incited the crowd to storm the Capitol. I wrote a post listing the 7 most violence-inducing statements. They're about fighting and showing strength and never giving up, but they're all consistent with an idea of having a big, traditional street protest — with lots of people marching and displaying their passion for the cause through big numbers, determined-looking faces, and lots words on signs and in chants and speeches. 

But what if Trump knew there was a plan to storm the Capitol? Then all those words are transformed! They become an incitement to the violence, especially if the people in the crowd know he knows. The avoidance of references to violence would be part of a shared understanding — like winking. We know what we're going to do. 

Now, at this point, I don't even know that there was a plan. 

Yesterday, I wrote about a New Yorker article titled "A Palm Beach Proud Boy at the Putsch," and, in the comments, Bob Boyd said, "Putsch implies a plan. There was no plan. It was a protest that turned into a riot." 

I replied: "That's your hypothesis. I await investigations. You have no way to know the extent to which subdivisions of the crowd were acting according to a plan." 

I'm not going to assume either way. Was there a plan or wasn't there? If there was a plan, when did it develop and who knew about it? If it was talked about on social media, the record exists. Wouldn't the FBI have seen it in advance and communicated to the President about it? But then, why was the Capitol not fully protected?! The vulnerability of the Capitol raises the inference that there was no advance knowledge of a plan.

This morning, I'm seeing this at Buzzfeed: 

The first glimpse of the deadly tragedy that was about to unfold came at 9 a.m. on the morning of the insurrection for one Black veteran of the US Capitol Police....

“I found out what they were planning when a friend of mine screenshot me an Instagram story from the Proud Boys saying, ‘We’re breaching the capitol today, guys. I hope y’all ready.’” 

Now, that's 9 a.m. on the day of the protest, so it could be a plan that arose at the last minute. But Trump's speech did not begin until 1:11 p.m. That's 4 hours of lead time. Perhaps that Capital Police officer is lying or mistaken or perhaps he doesn't exist at all and Buzzfeed is wrong. But it's a fact that can be checked with Instagram. And I want to see all that there in social media, all the evidence of a plan, and what law enforcement knew about this plan, whether Trump was informed, and why there wasn't better protection of the Capitol. 

I have held off from believing that Trump incited the crowd to breach the Capitol. You can see that in my 7 statements post. But if he was informed of a plan, then I will read all of those statements as an incitement, and I would have to say that he should resign.

In case you missed it...

This was gorgeous, in case you missed it. pic.twitter.com/XABIUDa0oP

— Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) August 18, 2020

I object to the use of children in politics but that was a lot better than this...



And this...



IN THE COMMENTS: Wince said:

Why weren't they shown taking a knee?

Simultaneously, Bob Boyd:

Were they all kneeling?

Which was exactly what Meade said here in real space.

The answer to Wince is: They were shown from the chest up, in the familiar coronavirus-y style of people Zooming from home. That's why it's so funny to ask "Were they all kneeling?"

"The only thing I’ll tell you is she never spoke directly to a person. She always spoke through her dog, and in a baby voice. It was really bizarre."

Said a 60-year-old woman named Maria Meade, who lived near Amy Cooper, the woman in the story "How 2 Lives Collided in Central Park, Rattling the Nation/The inside story of the black birder and the white woman who called the police on him. Their encounter stirred wrenching conversations about racism and white privilege" (NYT).

Another neighbor, Marisol De Leon, 40, said Ms. Cooper frequently walked Henry unleashed, and became irate when told not to. “There was a sense of entitlement,” Ms. De Leon said.

Alison Faircloth, 37, a neighbor and dog owner, recalled that last winter, she came upon Ms. Cooper on the verge of tears outside the building’s lobby. A doorman had cursed at her for no reason, Ms. Cooper told her. Ms. Cooper vowed to get the doorman fired, Ms. Faircloth said. But when Ms. Faircloth asked the doorman what had happened, he told her that Ms. Cooper had complained about a broken elevator, then cursed at him after she barged into a security booth and had to be removed by a guard.

“There’s always a narrative from her about someone who has done her wrong,” Ms. Faircloth said.

ADDED: Bob Boyd said:

It's too bad nobody got her on video cursing the door man through her dog in a baby voice.

I'd like to see that.

Amy slips... and it seems she's revealing that she's Biden's VP choice.

{ WATCH }

A slip this morning by Sen. Amy Klobuchar during a campaign event for Joe Biden in Grand Rapids.

“I could not think of a better way to end my candidacy, as hard as it was to do with our beloved staff and everyone else, than to join the tick—“ pic.twitter.com/KZvzqNzkUJ

— Mikenzie Frost (@MikenzieFrost) March 7, 2020

So funny... and kind of charming. I hope she is Biden's choice. I think they'll be cute together. What better way than a gaffe to reveal your connection to the gaffe-master?

Via "Klobuchar 'ticket' slip-up at Biden event in Michigan sparks speculation she'll be his VP pick" (Fox News).

AND: Let's see how Joe is doing:

This is Joe Biden at his St. Louis rally earlier today. He spoke for less than 10 minutes, and these are just SOME of the verbal errors he made. This is NOT a stutter. This is serious. @progressvoice @KyleKulinski @OrganizingPower @CANCEL_SAM @shaunking #WhereIsJoe pic.twitter.com/5zsWddwqNi

— The Path Forward YT (@PathForwardYT) March 7, 2020

IN THE COMMENTS: Bob Boyd tells the perfect joke: "Biden picked her because her hair smelled like honey mustard."

Books with talking animals as characters that are written for adults.

I went looking for this because, in the comments to a post about Meade saying he found Kirsten Gillibrand "rabbity," Bob Boyd said, "Meade's right and it occurs to me, if Gillibrand gets the nomination, Althouse may finally be forced to read 'Watership Down.'"

I reacted, "When's the last time I read a book with animals for characters? I did contemplate rereading 'Animal Farm,' but that aside, unless I was reading with a child, I can't picture it happening.... And I mean talking animals that are the main characters, not stuff like a guy goes looking for his lost cat (which I did read recently — 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle')."

So I easily found this list of 11 quite respectable books written for adults and featuring talking animals. #1 is the one I thought of on my own, "Animal Farm."

There's also Mikhail Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita" — with a "hog-sized talking cat... who sneers and snickers and entertains the Devil, pistol in paw, as they wreak havoc in Bulgakov’s Moscow." "Maus," which I have read. And "Kafka on the Shore," by the author of "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," Haruki Murakami:

It’s not that the cats in this novel can talk to just anyone; it’s that Nakata can talk to them—though that’s not to say they always entertain him, or that he can always understand them, not when they’re telling him things like “it’s a tuna, to the very end” and “Kawara’s shouting tied.” Or, let’s put it this way: some cats are more intelligible than others. 

"Kafka on the Shore" has been on my list of books I'm going to read soon, so I have to withdraw my snooty response to Bob Boyd. But I'm no more ashamed of being snooty than a cat is, and I'm never going to read that "Watership Down" thing.

"The Overdue Death of Democratic 'Pragmatism'/Centrism in disguise is the wrong strategy for stopping Trump."

A headline that makes me sad.

The article, at The New Republic, is by Alex Shephard.

Substantively, it's another one of these Amy-Klobuchar-must-be-destroyed articles.

[T]he press has cemented her identity as a pragmatist because she fills a key narrative role in the 2020 race: serving as a contrast to the supposed idealists who are driving most of the conversation (and most of the voter excitement) in the Democratic primary. This is shaping up to be the defining conflict of the race...

This is not a new conflict among Democrats, of course. To some extent, it has defined the party for the past half-century. The party’s rightward drift began in the mid-1970s, when the so-called “Watergate Babies” began to replace New Deal Democrats, but proceeded in earnest in the 1980s due to Ronald Reagan’s two landslide victories. The Democratic Leadership Council, formed in the wake of Walter Mondale’s defeat in 1984, pushed Democrats to embrace balanced budgets, welfare reform, and other centrist policies. The argument was that the Democratic Party must meet American voters where they were....

From a policy perspective, this shift has been an unqualified failure.... All four of the Democratic nominees who have lost elections since 1988—Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton—sold themselves as pragmatists rather than idealists. The two who won, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, wrapped their pragmatism in an idealistic narrative about the need for radical change....

And yet, amid the party’s [recent] decisive shift leftward, pragmatism threatens once again to smother ambitious new policies in the crib....

It's a bad day for baby-killing metaphors. Senate Democrats just blocked the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. And Trump tweeted, " The Democrat position on abortion is now so extreme that they don’t mind executing babies AFTER birth."

But let's get back to The New Republic's explanation of why Democrats ought not to flaunt their pragmatism. Ironically, it's for pragmatic reasons that they need to look idealistic:

It’s possible, for instance, that Klobuchar’s hypothetical smaller-scale health care push could hold on to more Democratic votes than Medicare for All—but there is no sense that it would win any more votes from Republicans. Despite the label, there’s nothing really that pragmatic about these policies, at least in this hyper-partisan moment....

Got that? Pragmatism isn't pragmatic.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bob Boyd said:

Thanks for combing through that word salad for us, Professor.

"Sign on the wall at Smirky's Café: 'Please Don't Punch The Rats.'"

Writes Bob Boyd in last night's "Smirky's Café" — the one with the smirking rat...



This is for you, Bob Boyd:

How threatening is Howard Schultz?

I'm reading "Howard Schultz, Please Don’t Run for President/A bid by an ex-chief of Starbucks would be reckless idiocy" by Michelle Goldberg at the NYT.

[T]his frustrated executive’s politics aren’t widely shared by people who haven’t been to Davos. In a 2017 study, the political scientist Lee Drutman plotted the 2016 electorate along two axes, one dealing with social issues and identity, the other with economics and trade. Only 3.8 percent of voters fell into the socially liberal/economically conservative quadrant....

That's why I'd like to see him run. It's a great quadrant, and it should be represented in the dialogue about what we want. It's hard for voters to find their way into that quadrant, because the 2 major parties don't make the pitch for it, and those of us who feel drawn to it are stuck choosing between candidates that never combine the issues our way.

Schultz makes much of the fact that around 40 percent of Americans identify as “independent.” But as anyone who has spent 15 minutes googling should know, independent is not the same thing as centrist....

Even if there were a latent constituency of modern Rockefeller Republicans longing for the leadership of an enlightened plutocrat, third-party presidential campaigns are terrible vehicles for building political power....

Maybe it would be better for Schultz to run for the Democratic Party nomination. Put him on the stage in the big array of Democrats, and let him do what Trump did to the Republican Party. I'd love to see that.  Would Goldberg?

I'm steeling myself for endless cries of Shut up or Trump might win.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bob Boyd points me to this epic heckle:

Heckler yells at Howard Schultz: “Don’t help elect Trump, you egotistical billionaire asshole!” pic.twitter.com/Fmlj7ng7HD

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) January 29, 2019

I'm not positive that isn't a pro-Schultz person. "Don’t help elect Trump, you egotistical billionaire asshole!" Maybe it takes an egotistical billionaire asshole to beat an egotistical billionaire asshole. And the entertainment value is through the roof. We are doing politics as entertainment now, and things just keep getting weirder. I remember when it was weird for Obama to make it. So amazing. Then Trump, the most bizarre thing I've ever seen happen in America. And Bernie Sanders was, simultaneously, bizarre. How can 2020 just be a parade of bland Senators stepping up to say, unlike Trump, I'm not weird?

2 views of Serena Williams.

1. The Atlantic: "Serena Williams's U.S. Open Loss Was Humiliating—But Not For Her/What happened to the superstar was shocking. It was not surprising."

Taking a game away from Williams for using the word “thief” during such a high-stakes match is unlikely to do much to quash the notion that a double standard exists between men and women in today’s competitive tennis field. And the stakes of that double standard can feel even higher for women of color....

To see Williams’s comeback after a traumatic birth stymied over seemingly minor infractions seems unnecessary and malicious. To see the devastation that those penalties wrought on two women of color at the top of their sport, during what should have been a joyous time, is heartbreaking.

During a post-game interview Williams was undeterred: “I’m here to fight for women’s rights and women’s equality,” she said....

2. New York Post: "It’s shameful what US Open did to Naomi Osaka."

Here was a young girl who pulled off one of the greatest upsets ever, who fought for every point she earned, ashamed. At the awards ceremony, Osaka covered her face with her black visor and cried. The crowd booed her. Katrina Adams, chairman and president of the USTA, opened the awards ceremony by denigrating the winner and lionizing Williams — whose ego, if anything, needs piercing....

ADDED: Another iteration of view #1. In The Cut (by Rebecca Traister): "Serena Williams and the Game That Can’t Be Won (Yet) What rage costs a woman":

"It would never be my intention to touch any woman’s breast... I don’t know..."

"I guess I put my arm around her. Maybe I crossed the border, maybe I was too friendly or familiar but again, I apologize.... I hug all the female artists and the male artists... Everybody that was up, I shook their hands and hugged them. That’s what we are all about in the church. We are all about love. The last thing I want to do is to be a distraction to this day. This is all about Aretha Franklin.”

Said Bishop Charles H. Ellis III about his encounter with Ariana Grande at the Aretha Franklin funeral, quoted at Page 6. See the picture at the link and tell me whether the Bishop "crossed the border." I say he did not, and the distraction was created by idiots looking for something to say while watching the live-stream of the funeral. These demands for apologies have gone too far, and so I won't say he should apologize for apologizing, but it was totally unnecessary.

Ellis also apologized to Grande, her fans and Hispanic community for making a joke about seeing her name on the program and thinking it was a new item on the Taco Bell menu.

Now, that apology was necessary. That remark really did cross the border. Or made a run for the border.*

And "It would never be my intention to touch any woman’s breast" is really funny. Not a credibility-builder.
__________________

* See "Taco Bell Slogans, Ranked" (putting "Make a run for the border" second to last, just above the current slogan "Live Mas").


IN THE COMMENTS: Bob Boyd said:

"It would never be my intention to fly into any flame." - Scorched Moth

"Nothing says 'I'm a WASP' like a black and yellow striped lip."

Wrote Bob Boyd in the comments to the previous post — in which I mention that in the 1970s, I saw the term "WASP makeup" to refer to the lipstick-only approach to makeup. I was riffing on a NYT op-ed which included the subtitle "Nothing says 'I’m a woman' like a red lip."

Charmed by Mr. Boyd's perfect comment, I took up the challenge to find a photograph of someone with black and yellow striped lipstick. Eureka!

32•100 #100daysofmakeup Sorry this is up so late, I've been a busy bee today! Lol 🐝

A post shared by Laura Jenkinson (@laurajenkinson) on Apr 30, 2016 at 2:55pm PDT

And wow, what a great Instagram account — Laura Jenkinson. What I've embedded above is one of the less interesting photographs. There are so many ideas here. Just to tantalize you with one that I love:

86•100 #100daysofmakeup Inspired by Valeriya Kutsan, if you guys haven't yet you need to check out her work - it's mind-blowing! 💘

A post shared by Laura Jenkinson (@laurajenkinson) on Jun 23, 2016 at 1:21pm PDT

ADDED: So let's do as advised and check out Valeriya Kutsan. Whoa! As predicted: Mind blown!