"The ad... could be the final shot in an extremely negative campaign. It puts the spotlight on [Tammy] Baldwin’s personal life..."

"... in an attempt to turn a low-key Midwesterner into a high-flying East Coast elitist. And it also tries to invert one of Democrats’ most effective criticisms of [Eric] Hovde, the extremely wealthy chairman and chief executive of a bank in Utah."

I'm reading "In Wisconsin’s Senate Race, the Republican Highlights Baldwin’s Sexuality/Eric Hovde is closing out his challenge to Senator Tammy Baldwin, a low-key Midwesterner, with a new attack ad that appears to want to make sure voters know she’s gay" (NYT).

Is Hovde just fighting fire with fire on the issue of who really lives in Wisconsin or should this be considered some sort of gay baiting?

IN THE COMMENTS: Bushman of the Kohlrabi gives what I think is the correct response to the NYT's accusation:

Tammy is openly gay. She has been praised for her gayness by major state and national media outlets for years. She has been openly celebrated and supported by LGBT groups since she was first elected to the Senate. Every Wisconsinite with a pulse knows she’s gay. Is she now saying she’s embarrassed to be gay? More likely she just doesn’t want voters to know if her partner benefited financially from her Senate gig.

McCain's casket is carried out of his funeral to the same song that was Trump's first dance at his inaugural ball.

From "At McCain’s Memorial, Tears, Laughs and Allusions to the Man Not Invited" (NYT):

And in a nod to Mr. McCain’s affection for the rites of tradition and his penchant for the irreverent, the ceremony got underway with a choir’s rendition of 'Amazing Grace,' but his flag-draped coffin was taken out of the sanctuary by a military honor guard to the piped-in voice of Frank Sinatra singing "My Way."

To refresh your memory:



Here's how I blogged that in real time:

FINALLY: Trump and Melania appear. Her white dress reminds me of cake decorating. Her bare shoulders glimmer. Trump's tux has extremely baggy pants. He eschews tailoring. That's his style. They dance that dance that's not really a dance — just rocking back and forth. I'm worried that the bulky Trump will squish the delicate swirl of fabric that extends from Melania's extensive bust. The dress is floor-length and then some, and I'm sure he's treading on it. Don't tread on me!

The song is "My Way" — "I ate it up and spit it out."

I like the way the Times was careful enough to write "the piped-in voice of Frank Sinatra singing 'My Way'" and not just "Frank Sinatra singing 'My Way.'" Keep it factual. Frank Sinatra was not there. We all know he couldn't be there. He ate it up long ago and spit it out in 1998. But the newspaper of record does well to stick firmly to the facts. It was the piped-in voice of Frank Sinatra at John McCain's funeral. And probably many other funerals. Many people loathe that song, but there's always one person who thinks (or whose family thinks) that he is perfectly unique. Of course, they are right. But there's a big swagger to the song, a fuck you all, I'm outtahere. Which is nervy at a funeral. And downright scary at an inauguration.

The other thing I wanted to highlight from the NYT is this:

[T]he gathering’s most awkward moment: that belonged to [Tommy Espinoza, a Mexican-American leader], who invoked Sarah Palin, Mr. McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election. Ms. Palin was not invited to any of the memorial services, and Mr. McCain, in his final book and in an HBO documentary, said he wished he had defied his advisers and picked his friend, former Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, for vice president.

Mr. McCain asked Mr. Espinoza’s wife, he recalled, what she would think about selecting a woman as his running mate.

“'Well, I really don’t care if it’s a man or a woman — if something happens to you, I want to make sure that person can run the country,’” Mr. Espinoza recounted his wife saying, prompting fleeting and muffled laughs in the church.

They laughed at Sarah Palin. Espinoza delivered a heavy-handed laugh cue and the people laughed and then stifled it.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bushman of the Kohlrabi said:

the piped-in voice of Frank Sinatra singing 'My Way'

But were there any actual pipes involved?

I'm just trying to hold the Times to their own Trump standards here.

I believe this refers to the press reaction to this famous Trump tweet:

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

The NYT published: "Trump Digs In on Wiretap, No Matter Who Says Differently."

In recent days, the president and his aides have tried to recast his original assertion to make it more defensible. Mr. Trump and Mr. Spicer have both noted that in two Twitter posts the president used quotation marks around the phrases “wires tapped” or “wire tapping,” which they said indicated that they were not meant to be taken literally....

The Times didn't even put quotation marks around "piped-in."