"And um recently I made the decision that I just for now I don't want to go back in the system. I think it's broken...."

"I believe and I always believed that as fragile as our democracy is, our systems would be strong enough to defend our most fundamental principles. And I think right now that um they're not as strong as they need to be. And I just don't want to for now I don't want to go back in the system. I want to I want to travel the country. I want to listen to people. I want to talk with people. And I don't want it to be transactional where I'm asking for their vote...."

Said Kamala Harris, to Stephen Colbert (scroll to 6:02). 

Colbert said it is "harrowing" to hear her say that. When she responded: "Well, but it's also evident, isn't it?... It is harrowing..." Colbert broke in to rescue her. It sounds as though she's saying that she doesn't "want to be part of the fight anymore."

She takes the hint: "No. Oh, absolutely not. I am always going to be part of the fight. That is not going to change. I am absolutely going to be part of the fight."

And then she plunges into a Biden-worthy garble:

Finding themselves alongside Kamala and Doug, Joe and Jill won't pretend to emit joy.

At the Kennedy Center Honors last night:

Jill and Joe Biden are refusing to even look at Kamala Harris tonight 😬 pic.twitter.com/qL6jftoLsu

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 9, 2024

Maybe Doug Emhoff hates Kamala — ever think of that?

These baseless comments from Sunny Hostin about President Trump and First Lady Melania are despicable.

ABC should take The View off the air! pic.twitter.com/GTcmnBnnOb

— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) October 3, 2024

"In contrast to the various septuagenarians on the national stage, [Doug Emhoff is] a youthful, keenly focussed guy who says 'awesome' a lot."

"I spoke with Tricia Gronnevik, a forty-four-year-old credit-union marketing analyst who attended the San Antonio rally. 'Doug just blew me away with how real he is,' she said. 'It doesn’t seem fake or forced, like good old J. D. Vance.' Gronnevik is a fifth-generation Texan—she grew up on a ranch—and she thought Emhoff would be a worthy First Gentleman. 'We need a new version of masculinity represented,' she said. 'I’m really tired of the alpha-male toxic bullshit. Being a South Texas country girl... I grew up in deer camps listening to a lot of misogynistic shit. It’s refreshing that we have men here who are supportive and not punching down, being bullies.' Emhoff’s 'super-cool' musical taste 'is making me love him even more,' she added. 'I’m a big New Order fan, too. The Cure is my favorite band of all time, so if he’s a Cure fan I’m gonna die.'"

Writes Sarah Larson, in "Doug Emhoff Takes His Gen X Energy on the Road/On the trail, Emhoff has made loving music, and his wife, look like a campaign in itself. 'If he’s a Cure fan, I’m gonna die,' one rallygoer said" (The New Yorker).

I asked Google what's the most famous Cure song. I got this:

Now, there's your nontoxic masculinity. Aim higher younger-than-boomer guys. I saw JD Vance's fuchsia tie at the debate last night, but there are miles ahead on the road to detoxification.

IN THE COMMENTS: People are talking about this Daily Mail article, so I want to note that I have seen it:

"On one side, there’s the enlightened maleness embodied by Harris’s vice-presidential pick and her husband, Doug Emhoff."

"These are the good progressive dads... the 'nice men of the left' who do guy things like coach football but also manifest liberal and feminist virtues.... Then there is the other model, the dark side of the Y chromosome: the toxic masculinity of Donald Trump, the anti-cat-lady conservatism of JD Vance.... But has liberalism perfected a model of modern masculinity while conservative culture slouches somewhere far behind? I’m skeptical.... First, I would have thought that by now liberals would be hesitant about proclaiming the special personal virtues of the male feminist, the enlightened pro-choice dude. After Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer and Harvey Weinstein, after MeToo case studies too numerous to count, surely we can say that sleaze percolates on the left and right alike....  Second... a strong, religiously motivated commitment to marriage and family — [is] not necessarily... anti-feminist.... [N]eo-traditional households actually show relatively egalitarian patterns of burden-sharing between spouses and strong paternal involvement in child rearing...."

Writes Ross Douthat, in "Masculinity Is on the Ballot" (NYT).

Douthat expresses skepticism about the generalizations and caricatures on both sides. I'll just add that feminism is dysfunctional if it doesn't stand apart from partisan politics. 

ADDED: I interact with Grok again:

 

I laughed a lot, and I'm not exactly sure why, but Meade didn't think it was funny at all, so I tried again:

That's only funny for being a terrible failure at understanding the prompt. Where's the dadness? Where's the feminist virtue? Why is he in a stadium? The first picture was funnier.

I need to decide if I care that Kamala Harris's husband cheated on his first wife.

I'm going to read the NYT article on the topic, live blog my reading, and come to a conclusion.

The article is "Doug Emhoff, Husband of Kamala Harris, Acknowledges Long-Ago Affair/The relationship with a teacher at his children’s elementary school occurred when he was married to his first wife, years before he met Ms. Harris."

A couple thoughts prior to reading the text:

1. Emhoff is the spouse of the candidate, and the opposing candidate — we've long known — cheated on his first wife. He also seems to have done some other cheating, perhaps a lot — more than I even want to waste my time to figure out.

2. Is the spouse of the President — the First Lady/Gentleman — supposed to be a symbol of purity? Does the old-fashioned demand for higher purity in women transfer to a man when he's in the classic "First Lady" position? I got distracted wondering who was the sluttiest First Lady, then annoyed by the answer the internet fed me: Melania Trump. Stupid internet mixes up sexual activity and posing nude. 

Now, let's read:

"Jewish Republicans are smearing Kamala Harris as anti-Israel.... Harris and her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, have a strong pro-Israel and pro-Jewish record."

 Writes Rob Eshman in Forward.

Less than a day after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential campaign and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic nomination, the Republican Jewish Coalition launched a series of tweets calling Harris “a total disaster for Israel” and “disgraceful,” falsely accusing her of refusing to condemn a Hamas supporter during a speaking engagement at a college.

Piling on, David Friedman, who served as ambassador to Israel in the Trump administration, wrote on X, “There is now the widest gap in American history between the two candidates’ support for Israel. Donald Trump is the best ever — Kamala Harris would be the worst.”...

There's also this from last April: "Emhoff calls Columbia University leaders amid campus unrest/White House side steps getting drawn in to the campus protests" (Politico).

“The Second Gentleman recognized that while every American has the right to freedom of speech and to protest peacefully, hate speech and calls for violence against Jews is both antisemitic and unacceptable,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to describe private conversations.

"In the first months of his presidency, JOE BIDEN vented his frustration about Vice President KAMALA HARRIS, telling a friend that she was 'a work in progress.'"

Politico reports on what's in a new book ("The Fight of His Life," by Chris Whipple). 

[W]ord got back to [Biden] that second gentleman DOUGLAS EMHOFF had been complaining about Harris’ policy portfolio — which her allies felt was hurting her politically....

“[Biden] hadn’t asked Harris to do anything he hadn’t done as vice president — and she’d begged him for the voting rights assignment.”...

Well, why wasn't Harris given what she wanted? Why didn't they try to help her build her reputation? If they thought she was a "work in progress," why didn't they help her progress? Did Biden make her Vice President to impede her progress? 

"It’s like you get the most confident, strong personality people, a lot of them being women, and it’s like you’re layering all of them on top of each other and it becomes everyone trying to talk over each other."

"So it’s a lot of really enthusiastic yelling.... It was nice to have so many different, really strong opinions. We always joke that whenever we bring our friends over for the first time they’re going to get grilled. Like, if you don’t have your 10-year plan, like, fully ready and outlined in a spreadsheet for them, you’re not going to survive that meal." 

Said Ella Emhoff, quoted in "What’s It Like to Have Kamala Harris As ‘Momala’? We Asked Her Stepkids/A Zoom interview with Ella and Cole Emhoff" (NYT). 

I was interested in the question — asked by the NYT interviewer — "Your dad has never not worked, right? What do you think that’s going to be like for him?" 

The reader is forced to infer that Emhoff is quitting his work. There's no link or statement to that effect, and I didn't know it. He's only 56. He's been a lawyer. I see at his Wikipedia page that he took a leave of absence from his law firm when Harris was running for VP, and he permanently resigned when she became VP. So what will this be like for him? I'd say, he's old enough to retire, and not retiring would probably cause more trouble than any good his working could have done, even assuming that his legal work was for the good.

Here's his daughter's answer:

I hope he takes up, like, another hobby. I hope he starts knitting, like I do. I think it’ll be a good time for him to slow down and just, I don’t know, like appreciate life. And tap into a lot of the things that he couldn’t do because he was working so much or had these, like, time constraints. I hope that it opens up some of those creative outlets, but that’s obviously just me, the creative child.

Let him play the supportive role with grace and dignity, like the female first and second spouses have done. He's inventing the masculine version of a traditional role. I've seen some people say that the arrival of a man into this role ought to be an occasion for getting rid of it altogether — as if the role itself is sexist, and putting a man in it reveals that it was never a good at all. But I'd say that line of reasoning is sexist. 

BUT: Just clicking on footnotes at Emhoff's Wikipedia page, I see "Kamala Harris’s Husband Named to Faculty at Georgetown Law":  

Emhoff will be a Distinguished Visitor from Practice focusing on media and entertainment law, which he practiced for nearly three decades as a partner at DLA Piper. He will also serve as a distinguished fellow of the school’s Institute for Technology Law and Policy.

Dad needs a hobby. Ha ha. Being a law professor is a hobby. Or such a nothing pastime that you need to load in something like knitting to keep from being at loose ends. 

That NYT question — "Your dad has never not worked, right? What do you think that’s going to be like for him?" — contains the inference that to be a law professor is not to work!