"In a Wall Street Journal poll of swing states, 30 percent of Black men said they would definitely or probably vote for Mr. Trump. For the disaffected, Mr. Trump offers the promise of radical change. In [a recent New York Times-Siena College survey], these 'tear-it-down' voters — some 15 percent of registered voters — prefer Mr. Trump by 32 percentage points.... 'The polling data has been wrong all along,' [President Biden] said in an interview.... Rejecting the polls — relying instead on anecdotes, instincts and vibes — is political malpractice.... ... Mr. Biden should assume [the polls] are right — and act accordingly."
Exactly how does one "act accordingly"? Just because Biden says the polls are wrong doesn't mean he believes they are wrong. One way to act as if the polls are right is to assert that they are wrong.
The open letter, whose signees include regular contributors to the Times and prominent writers and journalists like Ed Yong, Lucy Sante, Roxane Gay, and Rebecca Solnit, comes at a time when far-right extremist groups and their analogues in state legislatures are ramping up their attacks on trans young people....
I just wanted to elevate something I jotted out in the comments section to the previous post. The post is mostly about a spiked NYT column that criticized a NYT decision to fire a reporter who had said the n-word.
The columnist's focus on the speaker's intent connected to what I said was "the question I think should be at the core of the impeachment trial but is not: Did Trump intend that the crowd break into the Capitol and terrorize the members of Congress?"
In the comments, David Begley said, "Ann is correct in focusing on Trump’s intent. Did the House Managers even talk about intent?"
I responded:
I was not willing to sit through the hours and hours of presentation of other things that I already knew. I wanted them to focus on the decisive question: Trump's responsibility. Some people have a low standard and think that if Trump stirred up the crowd and made them feel energized to do what they independently decided to do, he's responsible enough. But they're choosing, I think, to offer nothing to those of us who think Trump needs to have specifically intended the breaking into the Capitol. Can anyone point me to the part of the trial where my concern is addressed? I'm not willing to stare at a smokescreen.
The post title is a play on an old Obama quote that I've always found highly amusing, but I'm quite serious in asking my question. Whether or not I am part of that You're-responsible-enough-Donald crowd, I want to be pointed to the part of the trial that addresses the question: Did Trump intend that the crowd break into the Capitol and terrorize the members of Congress?
It confirms my sense that my question was never focused on.
The "takeaways" are, first:
The angry, violent mob came to Washington at Trump’s invitation, the prosecution concludes.
But there is nothing wrong with drawing a big crowd of protesters. The huge crowd was overwhelmingly peaceful. Some portion of it became a mob and resorted to breaking into a building. But to say that isn't to say Trump caused the break in. And you don't need a "invitation" to go to Washington. We all have a right to travel to Washington and to protest whatever we want. Protests tend to take place at the site of the thing that is being protested. And speakers speak to crowds. We don't normally condemn that. I want to see consistency and clarity on these issues. Should Black Lives Matter speakers be denounced because they draw crowds and stir up emotions and later some of the crowd becomes a violent mob?
The second "takeaway":
Even after the attack, managers say Mr. Trump showed a ‘lack of remorse.’
This is a makeweight argument. If you don't confess that you've done wrong, you're tarred as lacking remorse. Of course, if you do confess, you've confessed. That's even better for the prosecution.
The third "takeaway:
Vice President Mike Pence’s presence looms large as a traitor, victim and hero.
So what? What relevance to Trump's guilt?
The fourth "takeaway":
Trump still appears to have enough votes to be acquitted.
Not surprising and not anything that counts against Trump.
"... was part of an army of women who worked as traveling Aunt Jemimas, visiting small-town fairs and rotary-club breakfasts to conduct pancake-making demonstrations at a time when the notion of ready-mix convenience cooking was new. I never knew about my grandmother’s work until long after she died... [W]hile researching a family memoir... I learned that she made good money and covered a region including Iowa, the Dakotas, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. She was often treated like a celebrity in small towns, but could not stay in local hotels. She kept an eye out for houses that had a small sign in the window that said 'TOURIST,' a code for homes that provided lodging and meals to black people.... As a family, we are offended by the caricature that Aunt Jemima represents, but deeply proud of the way my grandmother used the stage that was available to lift herself up. You see, in those days Aunt Jemima didn’t look like the lady you see on the box today. She was a slave woman, and Ione was expected to act and talk like a slave woman, using the kind of broken patois that blighted the full-page ads in magazines like Women’s Day and Life.... One of the things that irks me most about the Jemima brand is the way the mammy stereotype hijacked what should be an endearing image for black America and tried to turn it into something toxic. Most of us have someone in our family with fleshy arms and a loving smile who serves up cherished advice along with delicious food. They are our aunts and mothers and grandmothers. Our godmothers. Our queens.
You tried to make us ashamed of what Aunt Jemima stood for."
From "Why did it take so long to set Aunt Jemima free?" by Michele L. Norris (WaPo). (Quaker Foods announced that it is retiring the Aunt Jemima brand because to "make progress toward racial equality.")
The syrup, sold in a matronly woman-shaped bottle, is accused of being rooted in mammy culture and was modeled after the body of Thelma “Butterfly” McQueen, the black actress who played Prissy in “Gone With The Wind.” The Jim Crow-era “mammy” character was often used to show that black women were happy working in white households....
That's news to me. I looked up Mrs. Butterworth on Wikipedia and it did not contain that information. I did learn that the voice for the character was done by Mary Kay Bergman, who looked like this:
"Her parents were Jewish," and she died by suicide at the age of 38 in 1999. She was the original lead female voice on "South Park."
Her characters included Liane Cartman, Sheila Broflovski, Shelly Marsh, Sharon Marsh, Carol McCormick and Wendy Testaburger.... Bergman credited South Park for pulling her out of a typecasting rut. 'I'm known for these sweet, cute little characters,' she said, noting her roles in various Disney films. "So I've been doing them forever. My agents were trying to submit me on shows that are edgy, and they're laughing, 'Mary Kay, are you kidding? No way!'" After Bergman's death, the two episodes "Starvin' Marvin in Space" (the final episode for which she recorded original dialogue) and "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics" (the final episode in which her voice was used via archive footage) were dedicated in her memory.
No comment on the role of Starvin' Marvin and Mr. Hankey in the quest for progress toward racial equality. RIP Mary Kay Bergman. Watch this (it's phenomenal):
Mrs. Butterworth voice at 1:11.
ADDED: Norris writes that her grandmother, in the role of Aunt Jemima had to use a "kind of broken patois." And I see in the comments that David Begley is asking, "Just asking, but isn’t 'broken patois' the language of today’s rap music?" Which makes me wonder, what's wrong with a patois? To answer my own question, I naturally look up "patois" in the OED.
I see that it's "dialect spoken by the people of a particular region (esp. of France or French-speaking Switzerland), and differing substantially from the standard written language of the country" or — and this is "frequently depreciative" — "a regional dialect; a variety of language specific to a particular area, nationality, etc., which is considered to differ from the standard or orthodox version."
I was intrigued by this example from "The Sheltering Sky" by Paul Bowles (who was born in New York City):
Then he remembered having heard that Americans did not speak English in any case, that they had a patois which only they could understand among themselves. The most unpleasant part of the situation to him was the fact that he would be in bed, while the American would be free to roam about the room, would enjoy all the advantages, physical and moral.
"... with unmistakable heroes and villains — and often omits the complicating facts and inconvenient details that may make them less dramatic. At times, he does not always follow the typical journalistic imperatives of corroboration and rigorous disclosure, or he suggests conspiracies that are tantalizing but he cannot prove. Mr. Farrow, 32, is not a fabulist. His reporting can be misleading but he does not make things up. His work, though, reveals the weakness of a kind of resistance journalism that has thrived in the age of Donald Trump: That if reporters swim ably along with the tides of social media and produce damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest voices, the old rules of fairness and open-mindedness can seem more like impediments than essential journalistic imperatives.... It’s hard to feel much sympathy for a predator like [Harvey] Weinstein or to shed tears over [Matt] Lauer’s firing. And readers may brush aside these reporting issues as the understandable desire of a zealous young reporter to tell his stories as dramatically as he can...."
A long article. Much more to read. Check it out. But I will tell you that one thing that is not discussed is Ronan Farrow's treatment of his (presumed) father Woody Allen, notably his work suppressing Woody's autobiography. The censorship of a viewpoint in somebody else's book is worse than the omission of "complicating facts and inconvenient details" in your own reporting. Where is the true spirit of journalism?
IN THE COMMENTS: Dave Begley said: "Ronan must have something coming on Biden. That's why the NYT is attacking now."
That reminds me of something I wrote in 2018 and came back to last spring.
In August 2018, I'd run into a lawyer friend of mine who asked me whether I — a former constitutional law professor — was all excited about the "constitutional crisis."
What "constitutional crisis"? It seems to me the Constitution is in place, working as usual. There are some legal issues in play, but what's constitutional other than that some of the various actors in the drama have positions defined in the Constitution and obtained by normal constitutional procedures? It was assumed that I would excitedly spring into action because of this assumed "constitutional crisis," but my response was that I felt distanced from all the ugly divisions, though I thought some good might ultimately come from the crumbling of the 2 political parties. They were "getting what they deserve," I said darkly, adding, "We all are." That brought the conversation in for a landing, and as I walked on, I thought, What constitutional crisis? It isn't a constitutional crisis. It's emotional politics, a national nervous breakdown.
Last May, I quoted that and said "The phrase 'the constitutional crisis' must have been what everyone was talking about — what exactly was it back then? And these days we're hearing 'constitutional crisis' and what exactly is it now?" Yeah, what was it then? It was before the Ukraine phone call took place.
In the comments on that May post, David Begley started the thread with:
The Dems now claim we are in a constitutional crisis because they know that the Fake News will eat it up. Controversy generates readers and viewers. It also supports the “Trump is chaos” narrative.
And I said: "Too much wolf-crying. And who wants to believe they're chaos everywhere? That's not how the human mind works."
That can serve as my reaction to yesterday's hearing with the law professors, and it's why 3 other lawprofs urging panic, anguish, and quick, dramatic action were outweighed by Jonathan Turley's telling everyone to calm down:
I spend most of my news-reading time on WaPo and the NYT because they're better, and the alternatives are worse. I've defended my practice many times. I'm so often challenged by readers when I engage with the text of these MSM outlets. They ask why I'm still reading that, and my answer has always been that it's the best there is. Readers prod me to read The Daily Caller and Breitbart, but my view has been that stuff is too trashy. I can't stand it, and I'm not interested in writing about it.
But this morning the issue strikes me in a different way because yesterday I encountered the opinion, "You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad." I wrote:
[The] idea seems to be that there's a special harm in exposing yourself to things that are only somewhat good. Better to read outwardly trashy things than trash that has been inflated. And then there's also the idea that those who inflate trash are dead.
It was Gertrude Stein (as presented by Hemingway) who said "You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad." And she characterized Aldous Huxley as "dead" because his writings were not truly good but trash "inflated" to seem somewhat good. ("Why do you read this trash? It is inflated trash, Hemingway. By a dead man.") So I'm thinking about that.
Maybe the worst thing to read is something that's dressed up to seem as though it's not trash. Maybe it is better to read The Daily Caller and Breitbart... and Slate and Vox or whatever. Read the frankly bad.
Ah, but I don't need to protect myself like that. I hope you're reading me because you think I'm "truly good," and I pursue true goodness by reading the somewhat good things for you. I'm choosing to expose myself to the deleterious, inflated trash. I'll approach the corpse. Gertrude Stein still talked about the "dead" man who inflated trash. That's all I'm doing, talking about the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Bonus debate issue: Trump's tweets are frankly bad, and that's why it's good to want to read them.
Second bonus debate issue: If there's one thing that deserves to be viewed as deleterious, inflated trash, it's judicial opinions. (I am a professor emerita, having spent too many years palpating that corpse.)
According to a new CNN poll (click to enlarge and clarify):
Can that be right?
IN THE COMMENTS: Dave Begley said:
Meaningless and wrong. It is a state by state election. Not a national election.
Didn't we learn from the last election?
This is the terrible problem with poll-gazing. It's missing what you most need to know. Which of these Democratic candidates will be most able to get the people who could go either way in the states that can go either way. I'm one of those people, you know — in Wisconsin and capable of voting for either party's candidate.
"... reading poetry, listening to music, and painting flowers. But something holds me into this strange practice of observing and talking about it. If I'm just an observer and a writer, why don't I go find something beautiful to observe and write about?"
David Begley answered my question: "Go watch the Badgers destroy the Cornhuskers on Saturday. A beautiful WI win. I’m serious."
I answered: "I plan to watch the Brewers dissolve the Rockies tonight. Plus, I am eating grits this morning."
There's been much talk of beer this past week. It's easy to redirect the beer stream to baseball and the team with the beer-based name: The Brewers. In the rock-paper-scissors visualization, beer pours over rock. Beer wins! Brewers and grits. That's something beautiful in this lying, cheating world.
And by "rock," I don't mean ice. Don't put ice in your beer, and don't throw ice at anybody, unless you've got the right fun-loving, ice-throwing relationship with them.
UPDATE: The Brewers won in the bottom of the 10th inning, which is all we saw on TV. The rest of the game we heard on the car radio, as we drove home from Indianapolis, which is where I ate those grits, at a restaurant I recommend, Milktooth.
I assumed the NYT would check out a thing that reads like a parody before presenting it as real, but commenters immediately jumped on it. The second comment, from David Begley, is "Fake letter published by the Fake News."
And Amadeus 48 wrote:
This letter is a send-up all the way. It is masterful trolling that exposes the idiocy of the Sugars and their phony empathy shop. The right answer is always vote Dem and feel guity. Boo-hoo, poor little you.
I check back to the original column to see if the NYT has backed off on the authenticity of the letter. No. The thing is still sitting there in its apparently serious form that was enough to cause me to set my suspicion to the side. I've been asked a hundred times on this blog, why are you still reading the NYT? The idea is that I should have at long last had enough, that I should have by now experienced a definitive enlightenment and cried out that's it and thrown the thing aside never to pick it up again.
But without the NYT where would I go? I need a normal newspaper, and this is as close as I can get. There is no steppingstone to leap to. I need an American newspaper that covers the news comprehensively and in depth and has at least something to do with the ideals of professional journalism. I deal with the limitations by blogging, and blogging keeps me looking for and at the limitations.
What's the alternative? I can only see going into full abstention mode, like the man described in the wonderful NYT article, "The Man Who Knew Too Little" (but he did it because Donald Trump became President; I'd be doing it because the news is too tainted to read anymore).
"I feel like my literal existence hurts people, like I’m always taking up space that should belong to someone else. I consider myself an ally. I research proper etiquette, read writers of color, vote in a way that will not harm P.O.C. (and other vulnerable people). I engage in conversations about privilege with other white people. I take courses that will further educate me. I donated to Black Lives Matter. Yet I fear that nothing is enough. Part of my fear comes from the fact that privilege is invisible to itself. What if I’m doing or saying insensitive things without realizing it?"
You’re not going to empower others by disempowering yourself.... Seek out the causes and classes and candidates that speak to your vision of America — one in which the lives of the disenfranchised matter more than white people’s feelings...
Which sounds suspiciously like: Vote for the right party and you are absolved. That's from the male "Sugar," Steve Almond. From the female half of the team, Cheryl Strayed:
[P]art of learning how to [relinquish your privilege] is accepting that feelings of shame, anger and the sense that people are perceiving you in ways that you believe aren’t accurate or fair are part of the process that you and I and all white people must endure in order to dismantle a toxic system that has perpetuated white supremacy for centuries.
In other words, you should feel bad.
So it sounds as though "Whitey" is right where he needs to be. He feels ashamed of himself. Good. And then he just needs to vote for Democrats. That's how I read it.
ADDED: I wrote "this woeful man," but as Rick says in the comments "Nothing in the letter indicates this is a man." Isn't it strange that this person who stresses identity — "there is no 'me' outside of my white/upper middle class/cisgender identity" — has avoided leaving any trace of whether he/she is male or female? That's the most identifying identity of all, and yet it's eradicated from this weird letter. So is this letter for real? David Begley writes, "Fake letter published by the Fake News."
... Mickalene Thomas would transform the cool professor into a funkafied, stone cold, groovy cat reclining on a chaise lounge in the oval office, the walls doused in psychedelic patterns and sparkles. Though Thomas most often employs her powers of bringing her subjects’ sexiness to the surface with women, she might be talked into doing the same with the former president, turning him into the dancer he sometimes revealed himself to be: giving a little shoulder shimmy and a two-step, gray hair rendered in glitter like an astral field....
IN THE COMMENTS: David Begley comes at the idea of perfection from a different direction: Who should paint Obama: George W. Bush!
... but I like where Glenn Reynolds came out in this USA Today roundup of grades for Trump:
President Trump was elected in no small part because he was not Hillary Clinton, and he's done an A+ job of not being Hillary Clinton during his first 100 days.... And, I'm happy to say, I expect President Trump to go on not being Hillary Clinton for the next four (or eight!) years. A+ job, Mr. President!
Trump has accomplished more POSITIVE things in less than 100 days than Obama did in 8 long years.
I reacted to that:
I like the way Trump has accomplished NEGATIVE things.
Less doing. More nothing. That's what I want.
I give him credit for what he has NOT done. Where are the big bungles? He DIDN'T get that health thing done. That was good, no? Nothing military has happened. No foreign affairs blowups. Etc.
David Begley said:
Item one: Trump has begun to tear down the CAGW scam. That single positive thing will save billions.
I reacted to that:
Notice how that is SUBTRACTIVE and further supports my argument that his accomplishments are NEGATIVE.
That got The Cracker Emcee to say:
Every single day he's been in office, Hillary has not. You can't get more positively subtractive than that.
Trump has accomplished more POSITIVE things in less than 100 days than Obama did in 8 long years.
I reacted to that:
I like the way Trump has accomplished NEGATIVE things.
Less doing. More nothing. That's what I want.
I give him credit for what he has NOT done. Where are the big bungles? He DIDN'T get that health thing done. That was good, no? Nothing military has happened. No foreign affairs blowups. Etc.
David Begley said:
Item one: Trump has begun to tear down the CAGW scam. That single positive thing will save billions.
I Althouse reacted to that:
Notice how that is SUBTRACTIVE and further supports my argument that his accomplishments are NEGATIVE.
[Team member Carlton] Djam told police that their sex was fully consensual. He produced three video clips taken on the morning in question that showed the woman was "lucid, alert, somewhat playful and fully conscious; she does not appear to be objecting to anything at this time," according to the police report. This satisfied the police and no charges were filed....
[But] the university has its own process for investigating sexual misconduct that is separate from the police. According to the Education Department, Title IX—a federal statute mandating equality between the sexes in public education—requires universities to adjudicate sexual misconduct internally.... [T]he Office for Civil Rights—the agency that ensures Title IX compliance—has instructed universities to use a lower standard of proof. OCR guidance also discourages administrators from allowing cross-examination, one of the most vital tools a defendant has to prove his or her innocent.
As a result of Minnesota's Title IX proceeding, 10 players were suspended.
That insight was stated by Christian Bale in the movie, "American Hustle." Screenplay by David O.Russell.
That's really true in this election.
I'll bet "People believe what they want to believe" is said in a lot of movies. Kind of like "Let's get out of here," which we used to insist was said in every movie. Trying to figure out who first said "People believe what they want to believe" is like trying to find who first said "It takes one to know one" or "To each his own."
But I gave it a bit of a try and ended up on a page of quotes for the proposition "willful ignorance." It lets people "like" the quotes and the most-like one comes from Plato: "We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light."
There's an Ayn Rand one for you Ayn Rand folks: "The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see." I like the Benjamin Franklin: "We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid."
Begley connected it to the election (as did I, to myself, writing the post), so let me feature the Isaac Asimov quote:
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
And here's Ray Bradbury:
But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.
ADDED: That afraid-of-the-light quote isn't really from Plato. I thought it sounded un-Plato-y. Here's a list of things Plato didn't say.
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