The intriguing shape of the betting average graph.

Link.

IN THE COMMENTS: We all get together and recognize that the "intriguing shape" is a dinosaur. Wince digs up the precisely relevant Monty Python clip:

"Perhaps Judge Juan Merchan has been sobered by the defense mistrial motion he prompted last week."

"The judge foolishly allowed Manhattan prosecutors to elicit graphic testimony from porn star Stormy Daniels about a 2006 sexual encounter she claims to have had with Donald Trump. That testimony was irrelevant to the sole question in the trial, which is whether Trump fraudulently falsified his financial records in 2017. On that matter, Daniels has no knowledge; thus, her testimony was offered solely to inflame the jury against the defendant. Whatever the reason, the latest ploy by District Attorney Alvin Bragg was too much, even for the complaisant Merchan...."

Writes Andrew C. McCarthy in "Alvin Bragg again tries an underhanded tactic against Trump" (NY Post).

IN THE COMMENTS: Wince writes: "I still think Merchan is apt to surprise everyone by granting a directed verdict that extricates himself and the state from this unethical debacle, while avoiding an increasingly likely hung jury or outright defense verdict in Trump’s favor."

I've been wondering, which of the following 2 options is better for Trump and his supporters, going forward: Merchan grants a directed verdict, or the jury acquits. Again, consider only those 2 option and not others, and now tell me which is preferable for Trump opponents.

I'm not suggesting those are the 2 most likely options. I'm just asking who benefits politically from a directed verdict for Trump. Of course, at the point of deciding whether to grant a directed verdict, the judge doesn't know what the jury will do, and the judge should not take into account who will benefit politically (or whether he will be accused of doing so). 

Will people feel more confident in the judicial system if the judge grants a directed verdict or if the case goes to the jury? 

AND: Also in the comments: Mr Wibble answers my question: "His opponents benefit more from a directed verdict than from an acquittal. The former allows them to continue to claim that he's guilty but was only let go because of technical errors, with Bragg taking the brunt of the blame, whereas the latter would be seen as a repudiation by the public."

"[E]ven if we spend another year between now and the election carefully analyzing the structure and shape of the madhouse we’re locked in, it’s still a madhouse."

"As infuriating as it is to admit the electorate may choose another Trump term, the only answer may be to hold on to that truth. Rejecting reality only replicates Republicans’ errors that led to Trump’s rise. Exercise your reason, stay informed, understand what’s happening in all its detail. But at those times when you want to scream in fear and anger, don’t think you’re being foolish or irrational. It just means you can see what’s in front of you."

Writes Paul Waldman, in "How not to have a psychic meltdown when you see new Trump-Biden poll numbers/As infuriating as it is to admit the electorate may choose another Trump term, the only answer may be to hold on to that truth" (MSNBC).

I can barely understand what Waldman in trying to say. He stresses "truth" and "reality," yet the truth/reality that he claims to see is that our country is a "madhouse." So hold onto that and never forget: We're locked in a madhouse! 

I guess one could approach life this way: I'm not crazy, the world is crazy. It allows you to distance yourself from other people: They're not worth understanding or even respect. You're right to fear and hate them. 

IN THE COMMENTS: Wince links to this:

  

And Quaestor adds:

Martha Stewart kept peacocks and there were also 6 "large and aggressive" coyotes. "Let's Get It On," indeed.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Martha Stewart (@marthastewart48)

This is a metaphor, but for what?

6 coyotes killed 6 peafowl, and there are still more peafowl chez Martha. 

Martha knows the Marvin Gaye anthem to sexuality pairs horribly with predation, but it's the video she has of the proud Blue Boy, who is no more.

Imagine the coyote: "We’re all sensitive people with so much to give/Understand me, sugar..."

IN THE COMMENTS: Wince quotes Martha's "RIP beautiful BlueBoy" and links to "Well, he made it. Blue Boy is dead":

"I hate the word process, I just can’t bear it. People say, ‘What’s your process?’ My process is allowing my soul to leave my body and enter into the body of another human being...."

"I like to pretend that I’m the most attention deficit disordered person I’m ever going to meet.... I’m very conscious of keeping the reader’s interest. And I’m easily bored — I’m easily bored by books, I hate to say. And so I want there to be some sort of suspense or some sort of payoff.... It’s all about language.... Once I can figure out what the language inside [the characters'] head is — that way in which people talk to themselves without saying anything, the stream of what is running in your head — once I can figure out what that language is, I can get the character. It just clicks in."

From "‘I’m Easily Bored by Books,’ Says Writer of 22 Novels/The latest from the aptly named Francine Prose is 'The Vixen,' a surprisingly funny tale involving Ethel Rosenberg and the C.I.A." (NYT).

Notice that she's talking about inhabiting the head of the characters and the head of the readers. Those are 2 very different processes, but she's set on doing both things. If you had to choose one or the other, which would you pick? Do you want to read things written by writers who assume you have no patience at all? I'd rather be trusted to absorb what is actually good and also trusted to cast off what is bad. Write well, and earn our patience. Write badly and credit us with the sense to throw it off no matter how desperately you worked to grab our attention. So of the 2 processes, the better one is to get inside the characters' own stream of thought. Do that right and the problem of reader boredom should take care of itself. 

By the way, how funny is Ethel Rosenberg? Ethel Mertz funny?

FROM THE EMAIL: Paul quotes my long paragraph — the one that begins "Notice..." — and offers this quote from Umberto Eco's "Post-Script to The Name of the Rose" (1984):

My friends and editors suggested I abbreviate the first hundred pages, which they found very difficult and demanding. Without thinking twice, I refused, because, as I insisted, if somebody wanted to enter the abbey and live there for seven days, he had to accept the abbey’s own pace. If he could not, he would never manage to read the whole book. Therefore those first hundred pages are like a penance or initiation, and if someone does not like them, so much the worse for him. He can stay at the foot of the mountain.

ALSO: EDH sends this (and why have I never heard of it? I love Jermaine Clement!):

"In fact, Wallace [Idaho] is the self-declared 'Probable Center of the Universe,' and according to its citizens, for good reason."

"A proclamation given by then-mayor Ron Garitone on September 25, 2004, avowed, 'Our government-contracted scientists...have, after years of diligence, been unable to unearth one scintilla of [proof] that Wallace is NOT the center of the universe.' This year Wallace is celebrating the centennial births of two native Hollywood elite: Doris Houck, known for her roles in several Three Stooges films, and The Postman Always Rings Twice star Lana Turner, whose childhood home at 217 Bank Street still stands, and is in the midst of a renovation."

 From "THE 15 BEST SMALL TOWNS TO VISIT IN 2021/From Alabama’s music capital to the self-proclaimed ‘center of the universe,’ these American towns are calling your name" (Smithsonian).

Why not proclaim yourself the center of the universe? Everybody is a star. That's a song title. 

By the way, do you know that "Keeping Up With The Kardashians" has been on TV for 20 seasons? Here's a promo for the finale episode of their 20th season:

 

Despite years of diligence, scientists have been unable to unearth one scintilla of proof that the Kardashians are not the center of the universe.

FROM THE EMAIL: Wince writes:

Doris Houck may be best known as the girl who tried to mash Shemp Howard's head in a vice in BRIDELESS GROOM in an attempt to persuade him to marry her. 

Famous Stooges line: "Hold hands you lovebirds..."

Wow, these are some tough dames:

"The amendment tacked onto the Endless Frontier Act authorizes NASA to spend the money over the next five years on its lunar lander program on the condition that..."

"... the space agency awards a contract to build a second spacecraft — a deal that would likely go to Bezos’ Blue Origin space flight company. In April, NASA awarded a $2.9 billion contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX to develop a lander as part of its effort to return astronauts to the moon by 2024. Blue Origin accused NASA of a 'flawed acquisition' that 'endangers America’s return to the moon' and filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office. If the Endless Frontier Act becomes law, the amendment... would give Blue Origin a second chance at snagging a NASA contract..."

From "Sanders, Hawley blast potential $10B carveout for Bezos in Senate bill" (NY Post).

ADDED: Wince emails this amazingly apt clip from the movie "Contact" with the line: "First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?"

"Kamala Harris has this revealing verbal tic, where she simply repeats herself over and over when she cannot construct a logical argument."

"One example was her 'It was a debate!' non-explanation of her maligning of Joe Biden's character. Same when she said 'it's a movement' and 'they're not going to stop, they're not going to stop' over and over again."

Says Wince, in the comments to the first post of the day. I'd written about an author who said that the "peaceful protesters" and the rioters are not 2 different groups — that it's one movement — and he linked to this:

FLASHBACK: As violent rioting continues across Democrat controlled cities, Kamala Harris' comments from June are striking: Protesters "should not" let up.

Does Harris believe the rioting and rampant vandalism in Kenosha should let up? pic.twitter.com/hqkLmC5nRu

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) August 27, 2020

And here's "It was a debate!":

If you’ve never have food poisoning, it’s roughly like this... pic.twitter.com/KEUZpvQmk9

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) August 14, 2020

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?"

"He had this little list of rules that he lived by. They're all really good ones like, Don't talk all the time, Listen to your mentors and friends and learn from them."

"I actually have them memorized, which is kind of weird. Nobody likes an overbearing big shot, which sounds so much like his words... Help a friend when they're hurting."

Said Jenna Bush — her eyes welling with tears (according to The Daily Mail).

IN THE COMMENTS: Wince said:

"Nobody likes an overbearing big shot."

And, try as you might, nobody likes a wimpy, ineffectual establishment Republican.

Well, not until you're out of office or dead, and then only to use you as the new standard-bearer to attack and cow your successor Republicans.

AND: MadisonMan said:

"Nobody likes an overbearing big shot."

The Press gets to decide who fits that description.

Meade responded:

It's almost as if the Press is, itself, an overbearing big shot.

Look what Trump just tweeted 10 minutes ago!

pic.twitter.com/11nzKwOCtU

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2019

When I saw this in my Twitter feed, the photograph was only partially showing, only the belt level. I had to click on it to make the full image appear. I laughed out loud. A lot.

ADDED: I don't know how many votes can be swayed, but what it looks like to me is that it's really fun and lots of laughs to be on Trump's side, and it's painful and infuriating to be against him.

IN THE COMMENTS: "Wince" connects this tweet to Trump's "gorgeous chest" discourse at last night's rally:

The source of the myth that you need 10,000 steps a day is a Japanese clockmaker that marketed a pedometer called Manpo-kei in 1965.

There's no more science to it than that. Read Marketwatch, here.

Believing hitting the 10,000 number might motivate you to push a little further or to do it every day. Sorry to spoil that for you. But did you actually believe that 10,000 was magical?

Do you have any beliefs involving numbers? Do you know the point at which it deserves to be called "arithomania"? It would be funny if your answer to that last question had a number in it? (It's arithmomania when you've got 10 beliefs about numbers.)

Arithomania is a mental disorder that may be seen as an expression of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). Individuals suffering from this disorder have a strong need to count their actions or objects in their surroundings. Sufferers may for instance feel compelled to count the steps while ascending or descending a flight of stairs or to count the number of letters in words. They often feel it is necessary to perform an action a certain number of times to prevent alleged calamities. Other examples include counting tiles on the floor or ceiling, the number of lines on the highway, or simply the number of times one breathes or blinks, or touching things a certain number of times such as a door knob or a table....

I'm empty and aching and I don't know why/Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike/They've all come to look for Arithomania....

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH brings up Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule and "New Study Destroys Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 Hour Rule." And Limited blogger said "I always thought 10,000 Maniacs was an unusually large number of maniacs." Here's the Wikipedia article "10,000" where you can make many discoveries about the meaning of 10,000. I'll just pick one, from Taoism:

The great Tao covers everything like a flood.
It flows to the left and to the right.
The ten thousand things depend upon it
and it denies none of them.
It accomplishes its task yet claims no reward.
It clothes and feeds the ten thousand things
yet it does not attempt to control them.
Therefore, it may be called "the little."
The ten thousand things return to it,
even though it does not control them.
Therefore, it may be called "the great."

So it is that the True Person does not wish to be great
and therefore becomes truly great.

"Scott Adams apologizes for believing @CNN about the Covington Catholic Boys fake news."

Oh, well, this is interesting...

Scott Adams apologizes for believing @CNN about the Covington Catholic Boys fake news. With coffee. https://t.co/Izg0tq4YkB

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) January 20, 2019

... because I realize that my idea of what happened — which you're jumping on me about in the comments to the previous post — was influenced by listening to what Scott Adams said about it yesterday...



So do I need to apologize for believing Scott Adams? Not exactly. My post — "The man in the middle" — is carefully written based only what I know, which is what I'm always doing around here. I wasn't a tube channeling what went through Scott Adams from CNN. I protect myself from that sort of thing. But the way in which I wrote around my lack of knowledge was influenced by what Scott Adams said yesterday, and he's apparently backing off from all that.

I can't watch the first video yet, because it's a live-stream until he gets done and I entered after the relevant part.

By the way, one thing that I'm actively trying to avoid and that I'm wary of in other white people is a patronizing, sentimental attitude toward Native Americans.

UPDATE: The live stream is over now, so I'm watching the new video. First, Adams observes that on the very day when MSM were observing their own screw-up over the BuzzFeed fake news about the Mueller investigation, they were falling into another fake news story. Next, Adams admits, "I totally got taken by it," and begins what he calls "an extended explanation/apology."

He says he's now seen "extended video" and declares everything CNN reported to be "absolutely fake news." And it was the "worst kind" of fake news, because "They didn't even get the good guys and the bad guys right."

Adams believed, based on the CNN reports, that the "Native American man was awesome," because he came between 2 groups of antagonistic youths and "de-escalated" a conflict, and he called them "assholes." Scott refrains from repeating the a-word in the new video, substituting the word "jerks." Now, he says, based on longer video, "That is completely not what happened."

The most important thing that CNN did not report, Adams says, is that the African American group — the Black Israelites — were being "flat-out racist." On the extended video, you can hear them calling the Catholic schoolboys "crackers" and (repeatedly) "school shooters."

The Black Israelites denounced Democrats as "racist." "You didn't see that on CNN," Adams laughs. The black protesters were, Adams says, "overtly anti-white." "They were also anti-gay" and "used anti-gay slurs," and the Catholic schoolboys "spontaneously and unanimously pushed back against an anti-gay statement" — "They were offended." The Catholic schoolboys were smiling, "didn't look angry," and "were all well-behaved," Adams says.

CNN presented the elderly Native American man as coming between the 2 groups of youths, but, Adams says now, that "definitely didn't happen" — "He was just kind of doing his own thing... He was causing trouble. He was not looking to stop it. He was very obviously looking to cause trouble... He looked like he was escalating the situation, not de-escalating." [ADDED: I have now watched that part of the video, and I have nothing to say about what that man had going on in his head.]

Adams now interpret the boys as seeing the old man as "all part of the fun." "They were just sort of dancing around because he was dancing around." Adams stresses that the old man approached the boys — got "in their faces." The Catholic schoolboys "did not back up," which is what created the viral video image from which the fake news was manufactured.

Adams notes that CNN still has the story in fake form on its front page "Teens in Make America Great Again hats taunted Native American elder" and I'm seeing that now, at 11:30 ET:



According to Adams, in the extended video, you see a large group and only about 10% of them have MAGA hats, and, more importantly, they do not taunt the man. I guess CNN isn't afraid of libel suits.

Maybe Adams is worried about libel suits. He says, "I'm going to do a full 180 on you.... This is the most complete apology you're ever going to see from anybody. I couldn't have been more wrong about this group of kids. These kids kept their composure, stayed on the right side of every issue, avoided trouble, and never lost their smiles." But he still thinks "It was a mistake to wear their MAGA hats in public, because you know that's going to cause trouble and it probably did."

AND: Let me quote EDH (from the comments in the previous post):

Most of the kids seemed to be chanting with the drum beat, albeit in an irreverent way, but more jocular than threatening.

That's why I'd like to see what's on either end of that edited video clip, especially the genesis and termination of the encounter.

And who was the president that said "I want you to argue with them. Get in their face"?

I'll embed the 1 hour and 45 minute video, which I clicked on and watched less than a second of before clicking off:



I may watch it eventually.

OKAY: I've watched the key part of the video, and I think this is a whole lot of nothing. The men making the video remind me of religious ranters I've seen in Madison many times. Ordinary people just ignore them, and that's what I'm seeing in the video. The Catholic schoolboys group is large, and they seem to be taking in the free speech forum and doing some sort of cheers on their own, widely separated from "Black Israelites" group. Then the Native American guy enters the space and walks up to the schoolboys beating his drum. The schoolboys react by bouncing along with the beat in a way that seems to welcome the man and include him in their boisterous fun day out in the public square. Shame on the adult professionals who latched onto this as something to make into the big issue of the day. Total fake news. I ignored this yesterday, but my ignoring something doesn't have any effect on the total amount of noise. So I have to speak up and rephrase my silence into words: This is nothing.

AND: The man holding the camera narrates, accusing the schoolboys of "mockery" and so forth. But you're a fool if you watch the video and see what he's telling you to see. It's a microcosm of fake news, and big media responded and amplified.

"Why did the WaPo state that the incident occurred in her 'late teens' when summarizing the therapist notes, but farther down in the story state that she was 15 and Kavenaugh was 17? Is 15 a 'late teen'?"

Asks NYC JournoList in the comments to my Kavanaugh post "Does it smell funny in here?" I just added an important 5-point statement to that post, so I hope you read that, though it's hidden away in update position on the old post. But it's this "late teens" question that I want to break out into a new post.

The term "late teens" appears in this sentence:

Notes from an individual therapy session the following year, when [Christine Blasey Ford] was being treated for what she says have been long-term effects of the incident, show Ford described a “rape attempt” in her late teens.

Is that just WaPo phrase or is that the phrase in the therapist's notes? The therapist's notes — from 2012 — are presented as corroborating Ford's story, but if she's saying she was 15 and the therapist's notes say "late teens," then the answer to NYC JournoList's question may be that WaPo was allowing us to see a discrepancy in the corroborating evidence but not calling too much attention to it.

But then why isn't "late teens" in quotes (like "rape attempt")? Maybe the therapist's notes have a specific age, and it really is late teens, and if we knew the actual number, Kavanaugh wouldn't be 17 but 18 or 19 or 20. Which is it?! Kavanaugh would look worse if he were older, but he also wouldn't be in high school any longer, which would conflict with other aspects of Ford's story.

After so many years, Ford said, she does not remember some key details of the incident. She said she believes it occurred in the summer of 1982, when she was 15, around the end of her sophomore year at the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda. Kavanaugh would have been 17 at the end of his junior year at Georgetown Prep.

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH said...

Is 15 a 'late teen'?

No. In the parlance of Roe, 'late teen' would imply the third teen trimester, 18 thru 19.

At 15, Ford was in her second teen trimester.

It's all there in the constitution, if you look hard enough at the penumbras!

"I picked up a copy of Vogue just because I was, like, I need to know about women’s fashion now, because I’m gay."

"Jack and Will make fun of everything Grace wears on 'Will & Grace,' so I need to be like that."

Said Phillip Picardi, quoted in "Condé Nast’s 26-Year-Old Man of the Moment/Is Phillip Picardi, a former intern who now heads up Teen Vogue, the future of Condé Nast? Anna Wintour seems to think so."

Mr. Picardi grew up in North Andover, Mass. His father, a devout Catholic, owned a technology company. His mother was a homemaker and an executive assistant.... It made for a sometimes challenging environment for the young Mr. Picardi. “I was gay,” he said. “G.A.Y., with an exclamation mark and a little asterisk.”

He came out to his parents in the summer before ninth grade. It was 2 in the morning, and Mr. Picardi, who had just finished watching “Queer as Folk,” burst into their bedroom and said: “Mom, Dad, I have something to tell you.” His mother sobbed as he said everything he had to say. Ten minutes later, his father rolled over and asked what was going on. He had slept through it.

His parents sent him to a Catholic therapist and instructed him not to tell his neighbors, his friends or his younger brother. Before coming out, he had wanted to be a lawyer. Now, he decided, he should work in fashion.

“I watched ‘Will & Grace,’ and that’s what it felt like they were doing, more or less,” he said.

TV is influential!

You know, I find "Philip" such a hard name to spell. It it one L or two? It's hard to see, because the lower-case i also looks like an L. Picardi is a 2-L Phillip. He even spells "Phill" with 2 Ls, which seems excessive, but it was "Will & Grace," not "Wil & Grace."

Philip means fond of horses. "Phil" is love, of course, as in "philanthropy," and "ip" is the same as "hippos," which means horse. (A hippopotamus is a horse of the patomos (the river).)

Anyway, did you as a child get any ideas about how to live and be your true self by looking at some TV-show character? Here's a list of the top-rated TV shows when I was in 9th grade. Who would I have looked at and thought, well, that's where I'm going? I see 3 housewives and a "jeannie." The jeannie and one of the housewives had superpowers, and the other 2 were Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore) and Lisa Douglas (Eva Gabor). I can see why I was so deeply affected when the hippies suddenly appeared on TV...



And, people, Gomer was gay.

ADDED: I found that 1969 Gomer clip because I was looking for things with "Goldie" (that is, Leigh French), and I did not recognize — until EDH asked about it — that the other hippie there is Rob Reiner. And here's Reiner as Mitch the hippie in a scene in a 1969 episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies":

"The visceral instinct to physically attack a person who has just attacked you is strong; the surge of adrenal hormones makes it feel possible and necessary."

"That circuitry is increasingly vestigial, but overriding it and playing the longer game requires an active decision," writes James Hamblin — in "How a Man Takes a Body Slam/In an assault in Montana, two very different ideas of masculinity" (The Atlantic) — praising the Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs for his "judicious, prescient reaction" to the body-slamming he seems to have received from Greg Gianforte.

Hamblin likes the idea of "redefining strength" by accepting, in the moment, that one has been "physically overpowered" and not getting caught up in "the idea of masculinity as an amalgam of dominance and violence." Instead, Jacobs, speaking "as if narrating for the audio recorder," said “You just body-slammed me and broke my glasses." He also "started asking for names of witnesses to the assault who will be assets to his case as it plays out in courts of law and public opinion," and reported the incident to the police.

Of course, Jacobs's choices were not merely a matter of overcoming physical impulses and meritoriously eschewing violence. I don't know how much of an impulse to retaliate on the spot he may have felt. I don't really know how violently he was hit. I don't even know if he did something first toward Gianforte and Gianforte was doing the old tit for tat retaliation. But narrating the audio, dropping it on line, going to the police, and taking names for litigation purposes is also a form of dominance. Some people would even call it violence. Why, here's an article in The Atlantic from just last June: "Enforcing the Law Is Inherently Violent/A Yale law professor suggests that oft-ignored truth should inform debates about what statutes and regulations to codify."

You know, if somehow I were given the choice between getting body slammed and getting charged with a crime and the question were How hard would the body slam need to be before you'd prefer to get charged with a crime?, I'd say pretty damned hard. And I'm just a little old lady. I'd rather be body-slammed than get sued in tort. If you body-slammed me, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't hit you back.* But I'll tell you one thing: If you sue me, I will defend to the hilt, and —  where ethically appropriate — there will be counterclaims.

___________________

* And I have been body-slammed, at rock concerts, when I was trying to stand out of the range of a mosh pit and some young man came flying out obliviously. And sometimes it was intentional, an effort to provoke non-moshers to listen to the music the properly physical way. But I didn't call the cops or take names or file lawsuits.

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH says:

A "body-slam" is lifting someone completely of the ground and then driving their body to the ground.

It's not the same as "slam-dancing" on the periphery of a mosh pit, where one person slams his body into someone else's.

Wait. Let's get some shared understanding here. Does anybody think Jacobs intended to refer to the professional wrestling move? Here's a careful, precise demonstration of what that is:

"Fire Spicer and hire O'Reilly. It would be the most fun ever."

Surfed wrote in the comments to the post about the Trump interview transcript.

Meade wrote:

I said that very thing just a few days ago. So great minds think alike. A least I've heard they do. I don't know. Maybe great minds don't think alike. But I've heard it. From great scholars. The greatest. So I'm pleased either way.

I can vouch for Meade. He really did say that. About Spicer and O'Reilly. Not about great minds thinking alike. I don't think they do. See?

By the way, recently Trump said: "I’m not firing Sean Spicer. That guy gets great ratings. Everyone tunes in."

Trump even likened Spicer’s daily news briefings to a daytime soap opera, noting proudly that his press secretary attracted nearly as many viewers....

During an intimate lunch recently with a key outside ally in a small West Wing dining room, for instance, Trump repeatedly paused the conversation to make the group watch a particularly combative Spicer briefing....

ADDED: Also in the comments on that other post and before Surfed made his proposal, EDH wrote:

Here's what I propose: Trump hires Bill O'Reilly. They set up a fake "old school" cathode ray tube TV cabinet in the Oval Office. Bill O'Reilly then does The O'Reilly Factor show live in person from inside the hollowed-out TV cabinet while Trump watches the program.

Happy New Year's Day — pre-dawn, quiet-house looking back on New Year's Eve.

Some of you spent at least some of the annual-nonsense evening at this blog's New Year's Eve post. I'm up working on what I can't really properly tag written strangely early in the morning. It's just not strange for me to be writing early in the morning. Maybe there are some topics that are strange to blog early in the morning, but the comments that arrived while I was sleeping isn't one of them.

MadAsHell said:

Haven't you used this video....er, pardon me....movie in an earlier post?? 

Yes, here. Back when I was editing home movies and posting them as I made them. But I never put this up on actual New Year's Eve before.

Charlie Currie said:

Wait, these are my family home movies...ha...I really need to work on getting mine digitized.

It's easy to get them digitized. I was happy with Legacy Box. The hard part is figuring out what belongs in a watchable edit and not getting distracted by thoughts about how they should have used the camera. It's pointless to say hold the camera steady, pan slowly, and stop showing people opening Christmas presents.

EDH said:

Did any children coincidentally arrive 9 months after that hootenanny?

My parents already had their 3 children, 2 of whom you see in bed in the beginning of the clip. As for "hootenanny," I'm sure the music was not folk. I'm guessing, since it was danceable, it was some kind of big band jazz or Latin music.

BJM said:

Great video Althouse! My folks had a Tiki party room with bamboo furniture, jungle floral drapes, a palm thatched roof over the bar and a pair of red & white conga drums ala Ricky Ricardo... corny as all get out now... but it was magical to an eight yr old creeping down the stairs in the dark to watch a very similar scene of merry making on New Year's Eve 1954.

Yes, everybody loved Ricky back then.



Lucy always wanted to get into his act, and she embodied all of America's desire to get up and dance. Americans really wanted to be happy.

rhhardin said:

Traditionally, I just go to bed on new year's eve and the dog wakes me up at midnight when the rural gunfire starts outside.

At 9:31 PM, Peg said:

I'm sitting here reading Ann's blog. You can imagine how thrilling my evening is! ;)

I outdid you by being asleep.

Earnest Prole said:

If I recall from years ago, it's your mother sitting in someone's lap showing off her garter -- remind us of the story.

I had to edit something out of that part of the video. But there's no "story" to tell. I don't know who the man is.

robother said:

God, the memories! Even in the mid sixties, girls had garters holding up nylons, the flash of which was an instant turn-on. Pantyhose didn't off[er] anywhere near the titillation, and presented whole different logistical issues in seduction by dashboard light.

If only you knew the struggle in the sliver of time when miniskirts overlapped with wearing stockings and garters. Stockings had a dark band at the top, and, when sitting, you had to take care not to let your "stocking tops" show.

Andy Cunningham said:

I like how everyone used to look so nice. Back when, men wore suits, ties, hats and pocket squares even while robbing a bank. People dressed up for meals. Singers and comedians dressed up. You could often discern a man's job since it came with a uniform (and hat). Now with the 60's riff raff running things we are all under-dressed even to paint a garage.

Here's a 39-second edit I made of home-movie clips of my father. Check out — at 6 seconds — what he wore to install patio bricks.

Big Mike said:

Happy New Year to Professor Althouse and the irrefutable Meade.

Irrefutable?! I'm going to use that.

Sane_voter said:

2016 ended wonderfully with Mariah Carey's epic fail live on ABC just before the ball drop....

Ah, yes. A bad start for the year for Mariah Carey....

Shit happens 😩 Have a happy and healthy new year everybody!🎉 Here's to making more headlines in 2017 😂 pic.twitter.com/0Td8se57jr

— Mariah Carey (@MariahCarey) January 1, 2017

But what are you going to do? Shit happens.

I wish this were a better story.

Because I love this guy's name.

AND: That story is just enough to cause me to link to this other story I'd already rejected: "For some mysterious reason, penises seem to be having a makeup moment." I found that (at Cosmopolitan) after failing to resist "9 Lazy-Girl Ways to Fake a Shower."

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH writes: "Yet just yesterday Althouse was blogging about Florence Henderson performing as the Cockeyed Optimist!" Ah! Serendipity! Nice to return this to such a wholesome place. I could say life is just a bowl of Jello/And appear more intelligent and smart....

"And so he was really trying to dominate and then literally stalk me around the stage and I would just feel this presence behind me."

Said Hillary Clinton, talking about the last debate to Ellen DeGeneres. She also said: "He was really all wrought up, and you could just sense how much anger he had."

Sexist claptrap, in my opinion, but Trump's response, which starts out okay, ends in what I'm seeing as a rape joke:

“So I’m standing at my podium by my chair. She walks across the room. She’s standing in front of me, right next to me,” Trump claimed.“And the next day I said what did the papers say? They said, ‘he invaded her space,’” he said. “Believe me, the last space that I want to invade is her space.”

IN THE COMMENTS: A lot of people are unable or unwilling to see the innuendo that I see, perhaps because you want to protect Trump. For example I Have Misplaced My Pants says:

I see no evidence that he is referring to Clinton's [I presume Althouse suggests] vagina. Althouse, you have a dirty mind. You do this a lot. Is your mind and your blog--just want to counterbalance!

On the other hand, Unknown says:

Of course he was using double entendre. How dense are you people?

And then there is EDH:

Althouse: "ends in what I'm seeing as a rape joke" ... which I guess is okay if you're a liberal, like Norman Lear?

"Who'd wanna rape you, anyway?"