"This is the night I should go to the theater."

Chris — my son, the reader of presidential biographies — texts me another passage from "President Kennedy: Profile of Power" (commission earned).

"[T]his relationship is pathological, and a source of great irritation among other courtiers. It is Trump distilled to his essence..."

"... cult leader and his most rabid follower, narcissist and his most flattering mirror. The daughter of a devoutly Christian real estate broker who died by suicide during the pandemic, [Natalie] Harp idolizes Trump with a rare fervor.... ... Trump told his staff that Harp was the only one who loved him as much as his wife and kids did. 'She’ll never leave me,' he would tell other staffers.... It’s a perfect (taxpayer-funded) relationship. She thinks he’s amazing. And he agrees."

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "Natalie’s Magnificent Obsession" (NYT gift link).

"Obsession" is the title of a current movie that is, as Dowd tells us, "about a man who wishes for more adoration from a young woman, who falls under his spell and maniacally provides it." 

I haven't seen it. And I haven't seen "Magnificent Obsession," but I know it's a 1954 movie starring Ronald Reagan's first wife:

ADDED: After reading Dowd's column, I scribbled this at Grok, writing quickly, without the intention of sharing it, but I'm sharing it:

I'm interested in they way many women in the workplace are competitive with other women in a way that's actually sexist — judging that other women are getting more than they deserve because of their looks and/or imagining that sexual things are going on. They're actually impeding the progress of women... or are they trying to help some subset of women by pulling particular women down? (I'm thinking about the reaction to Natalie Harp.)

And then I connected the Natalie Harp foofaraw to this passage from "President Kennedy: Profile of Power" (commission earned) that my son Chris — reader of presidential biographies — had just texted to me last night. We join the Cuban Missile Crisis in progress.

Jackie's head in a hatbox.

My son Chris, who's nearing the end of his project of reading biographies of all of the American Presidents, sends me very well-chosen snippets of things now and then.

He's reading "President Kennedy: Profile of Power" by Richard Reeves (commission earned), and he sends this:

"... a Goddamn coward..."

Chris, reader of presidential biographies, sends me a photograph of the book he's reading:

"You know, the hot one, with polio."

My son Chris took a photo of a sign in an ice cream shop in Austin, Texas:

Chris happens to reading a book about FDR at the moment — "FDR." On Sunday, he sent me this passage that describes FDR’s first public appearance after being paralyzed from polio:

"Washington felt like a penitentiary to him. 'There is no human intercourse in it... at any rate for the President.'"

"He" = Woodrow Wilson.

From A. Scott Berg's "Wilson" (commission earned), in a passage found, photographed, and texted to me by my son Chris, who's getting close to the end of his project of reading a biography of each American President.

Read on:

One is surprised to visualize the President of the United States traipsing through the streets of Manhattan, hoping to be incognito, collecting a crowd, and then ditching it by wending through the Waldorf-Astoria and hopping on a motorbus.

That seems like enough, but then to hear that the President "could not help wishing... that someone would kill him."

AND: Here's another passage Chris sent me from that book. This happened in 1879, when he was a law student, age 23:

Bloviate.

From a biography of Warren G. Harding:

That was sent to me by my son Chris, who is quite far along toward his goal of reading a biography of every U.S. President. 

In the 22-year history of this blog, I've never used the word "bloviate." Twice, though, I've quoted someone else:

1. My November 1, 2019 post, "An impeachment trial would help Joe Biden — because Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Cory Booker would all face the obligation to do their job as Senator," quoted NY Magazine writer Ed Kilgore, who wrote:  "[An impeachment trial] could be a boon to non-senators — particularly Joe Biden, who can bloviate to his heart’s desire about the lessons he learned on impeachment and all the issues involving Trump during his 44 years as a member or presiding officer of the Upper Chamber...." 

2. On October 7, 2004, the first year of this blog, I quoted Al Franken, who was boasting about his radio show on the radio network Air America: "We do a different kind of show. I'm not the mirror image of Rush Limbaugh. I do a totally different kind of show. I don't bloviate for three hours and pull stuff out of my butt and mislead and lie. We're very scrupulous about our facts. I'm proud of that." (I do go on to quip about whether Franken "did in fact bloviate," so count that as my using the word if you must, but I'm really still essentially quoting him.)

In both of those instances, the user of "bloviate" is insulting someone else. President Harding, the popularizer of the word, used it about himself, self-deprecatingly. 

***

Here's the biography — commission earned — "Warren G. Harding: The American Presidents Series: The 29th President, 1921-1923." Warning: It's by John Dean. Chris says: "It’s part of a series of very short books that I use when the options are very limited." He's relied on that series to read about William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, and Benjamin Harrison.

Another snapshot from a presidential biography.

Texted, just now, from my son Chris, who reads presidential biographies:

The book is "The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism" (commission earned).

I think there's some fat-shaming there, no? Or fat-celebrating. Also: "Venezuelan troubles."

"When I see my own ex at a party, I clam up. Go in on myself like a jump-started pangolin."

Writes Simon Mills, in "I know how Madonna and Guy Ritchie must have felt in that room/Reunited after 17 years for their son Rocco’s exhibition, the former It couple made a good show of civility. So why can’t everyone else do the same?" (London Times).

He's simultaneously like a mollusk and a scaly anteater, but we see what he means. 

I have actually discreetly exited several events when spying her across the room. If I know in advance that she will be attending something, I tend to avoid it altogether. It’s stupid, ridiculous, teenage behaviour — I am 61! Divorced for almost 13 years!... I can’t deal with the unnerving strangeness of not knowing someone I once knew so well.... A festering, debilitating, emotionally ruinous sense of shame remains, blighting progress and preventing sleep....

I sent a link to this article to my son Chris, and he texted: "At first I thought it was gonna be about them having to pretend their son is a great painter." 

"... the baby is fat... "

Chris, who reads biographies of U.S. Presidents, texts me this photo from "The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism" by Doris Kearns Goodwin (commission earned).

If your first baby was "frail from birth" and died at 14 months, you too would experience joy to see the new baby is actively fat. Taft grew to a heft of 340 pounds, our fattest President by far.

Chris also sends this photograph he took, in case you are wondering what Christmas decorations look like in Austin:

"Grover Cleveland... was most easily roused to wrath when someone was misquoting Tennyson. There was thus some irony..."

"... when, in later years, Cleveland's political opponents dubbed him 'The Buffalo Hangman,' both because the label could have boomeranged in his favor and because it masked the fact that Cleveland was an especially faint-hearted executioner.... And yet he didn't have to do it...."

My son Chris reads biographies of the American Presidents and sometimes texts me photographs of striking passages.

This comes from "A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland" (commission earned):

"Unfazed by rats..."

My son Chris reads books about Presidents and sends me the occasional snapshot. That's the latest.

AND: Who was Clover Adams? Wikipedia:

Clover, who has been cited as the inspiration for writer Henry James's Daisy Miller (1878) and The Portrait of a Lady (1881), was married to writer Henry Adams. After her suicide, he commissioned the famous Adams Memorial, which features an enigmatic androgynous bronze sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, to stand at the site of her, and his, grave.

Not snobbish enough to refrain from suicide — or can suicide be snobbish?! In any case, what a grave —

How ugly was he?

That's from my son Chris, who, as I told you before, is in the midst of a project of reading a biography of every American President. He reads his books in book form, so he texts photos of paragraphs when he's got something to share.

The paragraph above comes from Ron Chernow's "Grant" (commission earned).

How ugly was General Benjamin Butler? Pictures, here, at Wikipedia. He looks bad, but not as bad as those words make him sound. As Chris put it: "You have to really hate someone to describe them that way."

Here's Butler's General Order No. 28 (with rhetorical flourishes that may remind of a certain modern-day President):

Chris and I independently thought that seemed like a Trump tweet! The capitalization is so evocative. And that willingness to use strong interpretations of law to intimidate those who are affronting you....

Maybe Trump is tapping into a deep vein of American rhetoric.

Until now, we had, living among us, the grandson of the 10th President of the United States.

I'm seeing this in The Richmonder: "Harrison Ruffin Tyler, grandson of 10th U.S. president and longtime Richmonder, dies at 96."

Born on Nov. 9, 1928 in Richmond, Tyler was the son of Lyon Gardiner Tyler and Sue Ruffin. His father was a son of President John Tyler and president of William & Mary for more than three decades; his mother came from another Virginia family of long lineage and ardent support for slavery and secession.... President John Tyler was 63 when Lyon Gardiner Tyler was born; Lyon was 75 when Harrison entered the world.... At age 8, he was invited to the White House to meet President Franklin D. Roosevelt....

My son Chris, who is dedicated to reading a biography of every American President, read "President without a Party: The Life of John Tyler," by Christopher J. Leahy (commission earned). Chris does not read books on Kindle, so when he wants to share something with me, he texts me a photo. For Tyler, he sent this:

A new chapter in The History of Ears.

I'm reading "From Van Gogh to Mike Tyson: a brief history of ears," a 2009 Guardian article, by Lucy Mangan.

Found after trying to think of a list of famous ears, a list to which Trump's ear will now take one of the top 2 spots. I think Van Gogh's ear still belongs in first place.

I'd thought of the ear Mike Tyson bit off but had forgotten whose ear it was. (It was Evander Holyfield's.)

I'd thought of a movie ear —

In the year 3035.

I'm reading "U.S. Tightens Car Mileage Rules, Part of Strategy to Fight Climate Change/The shift, which could reshape the American auto market, is designed to encourage sales of electric vehicles and hybrids" (NYT):

Thanks to my son Chris for noticing that... 

 

I love the idea of the culture around pickup trucks in 3035.

Anyway, seriously:

"The presidency is really hard, people age during the presidency. Maybe he’s just what a lot of 80 year olds would be like if you made them work that hard."

Texted my son Chris, in a discussion about some recent Biden videos — the one about cannibalism, the one about little kids in the west giving him the finger, and the one where he has trouble closing a box:

Joe Biden can’t close a box and struggles to order a milkshake at a Wawa convenience store… But democrats somehow think you won’t notice and will believe he’s going to be able to solve the complex problems of the world. 🤡🤡🤡 pic.twitter.com/ZfbXtME7aV

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) April 19, 2024

Chris had asked, "Do you think he really has dementia? To me he’s always seemed like he had a screw loose. Even in What It Takes" (commission earned link)("What It Takes" is a book about the 1988 presidential campaign, which Chris just read and I am rereading).

I said: "Maybe he’s faking it.... Faking it and having a little dementia mixed in." 

He said: "To me he seems extremely low energy. The presidency is really hard, people age during the presidency. Maybe he’s just what a lot of 80 year olds would be like if you made them work that hard."

The idea of driving 80 year olds to work extremely hard, under 24/7 high stress, is quite disturbing. Who can imagine a torturous work camp like that? Of course, we aren't making Joe do it. He's insisting on it for himself.

In an alley next to the Palace Güell in Barcelona, Spain...

... my son Chris photographs that mural and this poster....

A closer look:

"This is not the first midcentury, middle-America food craze to find new life online: Jell-O molds, 1970s-era desserts and 1970s-themed dinner parties..."

"... have all made unexpected comebacks. That’s all 'packaged-food cuisine' born of the hyper-consumerism of the 1950s.... For some, the box mixes and cans — triumphs of postwar prosperity — are a rosy portal to an imagined 'simpler time' of family dinners and easy living. 'That is nostalgia for America,' she said. 'That is our national comfort food.'"

From "Watergate Salad Makes a Comeback/The 1970s-era dish made with pistachio pudding mix, canned pineapple and mini marshmallows has caught the curious eye of the TikTok generation" (NYT).

It's absurd that something embodying nostalgia for a lost culture should bear the name "Watergate." But the nostalgia is felt by young people today, who don't mind mixing the 50s, 60s, and 70s together, not like us Boomers who think the early 60s, mid-60s, and late 60s were distinctly different eras and have long indulged in the deep, mystic belief that the first few years of the 70s were the real 60s.

And maybe there is nostalgia for the Watergate scandal. Maybe it seems poignant and delicate compared to the scandals of today... and even for Nixon. My son Chris — who is reading a biography of each American President — texted me about Nixon recently — somewhat jocosely — "Nixon is underrated. He was liberal!/Got more done for progressive causes than democrats do today." 

Anyway, the nostalgia for lost mid-century America is about far more than food. There's a sense that people lived more rewarding, warm, and loving lives back then. Here's something I saw on TikTok the other day. Let me know how it made you feel or, better yet, if you are not young, show it to someone young and ask them how it makes them feel:

Instagramming from Tokyo.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chris Althouse Cohen (@caltcoh)

 

Photos by my son, Chris.