"It's tricknological, when white people invoke the holocaust. allows them to step out of their whiteness and slip on fake oppression."

Wrote Doreen St. Félix, in an X post screencapped in an Instapundit post by Ed Driscoll.

St. Félix published an article — in The New Yorker — about the Sydney Sweeney jeans/genes foofaraw. I'd skipped that article — I was Sweeneyed out by the time it appeared — but I see from the excerpt at Instapundit that it contained lines like "Interestingly, breasts, and the desire for them, are stereotyped as objects of white desire, as opposed to, say, the Black man’s hunger for ass." The desire is the object of desire? That's defective writing, and The New Yorker got its lofty reputation in part because of its punctilious word editing. But St. Félix is in The New Yorker, thus making her statements conspicuous and goofier than they would be somewhere else, like X (or a blog). 

Hey! It says "Black man’s hunger for ass" in The New Yorker.

The screencappers of X plunged into St. Félix's X account, homing in on posts with the words "hate" and "white people." Go to the Instapundit link to see what they found. 

What calls me is that new word: "tricknological." The adjective is, apparently, formed from the word "Tricknology," which is in the OED and traced back to 1938. It's marked "U.S. disparaging." It means:

"At some point, we gotta be upset about this," says Ezra Klein, nervously chuckling.

Yeah? What point?!

Ezra Klein explains how it feels to be a Democrat in under 30 seconds:
Ezra Klein: "The stimulus bill under Obama, that had 3 big headline projects for reinvestment.
High speed rail, smart grid, a nation wide system of interoperable health records. 0 for 3"
Gavin Newsom: "I… pic.twitter.com/Rlq1z8fGRb

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) March 26, 2025

Via Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, who's put together a nice series of clips and quotes on the theme "The Democratic brand is toxic right now."

This is a theme that gets my tag "Democratic Party in Trumpland."

BUT: Really, the problem Klein chuckles over pre-dates the Trump era. It's the failure of the Obama agenda:  "The stimulus bill under Obama — that had 3 big headline projects for reinvestment. It had high speed rail. It had smart grid. And it had a nation wide system of inter-operable health records.... 0 for 3."

I don't know why I'm convinced I get Mick Jagger, but this...

I’m so looking forward to coming back to an America free of harsh words and name calling and be amongst people who I know have common ground and harmony. It’s a challenge but it can be done!

— Mick Jagger (@MickJagger) November 7, 2020

... this is sarcasm. I got there via Ed Driscoll at Instapundit who doesn't seem to be reading Mick's tweet as humor, but come on.

I'm seeing a lot of adulation of Kayleigh McEnany coming from the right...

... but I watched this one in real time yesterday...



... and I thought it was clumsy and nonresponsive. I felt a little embarrassed for her. Later, looking at social media, I saw her extolled by people who, I think, are expressing their real enthusiasm.

For example, at Instapundit, there's Ed Driscoll, offering that clip and saying: "REPORTER ASKS KAYLEIGH MCENANY TO EXPLAIN OBAMAGATE AND THE CRIMES ALLEGEDLY COMMITTED, IMMEDIATELY REGRETS IT." No, I don't think that reporter regretted it, immediately or later. I think he believed he put her on the spot and followed up accurately and intensely and brought out her inability to state clearly and concisely what the "Obamagate" crimes are supposed to be.

And on Twitter, Mike Cernovich presented the same clip and remarked — again, with the all caps — "WHO IS THIS QUEEN????" To which, Scott Adams chimed in, "It’s a slaughter."

Do they know they're doing propaganda or are they simply enthralled? Or am I wrong to stand apart and aloof and resist what is a stunningly articulate spokeswoman with a true and a powerful message to deliver?

ADDED: McEnany was absolutely on notice that she needed to have a better answer than Trump, who said, when asked basically the same question: "You know what the crime is, the crime is very obvious to everybody, all you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours."

"[T]he types who surfaced in Charlottesville on Saturday are certainly human beings of the most repellent and disgusting sort, murderous too..."

"... pretty much violent, evil sociopaths. I wouldn't mind if they were all rounded up, put in a space ship, and sent on a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri.... What happened in Charlottesville isn't us. It's just a small group of real bad people. Indict them, convict them, and lock them up for a long as possible. The rest of us should move on."

Writes Roger Simon in a post that's been linked to twice in the last 2 hours at Instapundit — first by Ed Driscoll...

ROGER SIMON: Is Charlottesville Really What’s Going on in the USA?

Read the whole thing.

... and second by Glenn Reynolds...

I WAS GOING TO WRITE SOMETHING ABOUT CHARLOTTESVILLE TODAY, but honestly I don’t think I could do better than Roger Simon. I do want to echo his comment that, for all the racial tension we see in the media and in politics, out in the actual world black and white people seem to be getting along pretty well. I wrote something about that here.

Somehow, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I look at those people — with their cheesy tiki torches, their cosplay shields, and their lack of female companionship — and I see them as lost souls. I'd like to invite them down off the ledge and into a more rational, loving human existence.

I wouldn't throw them in a basket of deplorables or shoot them on a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri. I wouldn't "Indict them, convict them, and lock them up for a long as possible." If any individual commits a crime, enforce the criminal law following the same standards of due process that apply to everyone else and impose a fair sentence. But don't go after people because you hate them as a group, and don't use criminal law to squelch thought and speech.

Less hate. More love. Less censorship. More speech.

"Howard Dean wonders if Donald Trump’s continuous sniffing is coke-related."

"Huh. I’m old enough to remember when the left at least paid lip service to hating McCarthy-esque smear campaigns...." blogs Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.

Well, Dean was only asking. It was pretty hard not to be distracted by the sniffling. I thought Hillary was the one who was supposed to be sick, and here's Trump with — what? — a cold. He was mostly sniffling at the beginning. I was exclaiming "He keeps sniffing!" And he had that new vertical-index-finger gesture — you know, the upper lip windshield wiper move? Since I was on alert to see if Hillary had what it takes physically, I was riveted by Trump's nose.

ADDED: Trump said: "No sniffles. No. You know, the mic was very bad, but maybe it was good enough to hear breathing, but there was no sniffles." If you heard sniffles, you're wrong or the microphone was wrong.

The official Hillary Clinton website does viral media with a collection of how-to tips on how to make DIY Hillary costumes for Halloween.

The page is titled "Texts from Hillary and 4 other DIY Hillary Clinton costumes for Halloween/What’s in Hillary’s closet? A lifetime of looks," and there are 5 photos of Hillary from various stages of her life, each with a photo of a woman emulating her. We're given a list of items, for example, to be "Hipster Hillary," from 1969, you need a white blouse, glasses, striped pants, "leather shoes" (why stress "leather" rather than sandals?), and long, loose hair. The campaign promo is there: Hillary was "Wellesley College’s first-ever student commencement speaker."



I got there via Ed Driscoll at Instapundit, that is, I caught the virus through someone who loathes Hillary and prompts readers to laugh contemptuously ("Not The Onion"). I was initially surprised that the campaign would portray Hillary as a subject for Halloween (traditionally the realm of monsters and the dead), but reading the page, I saw the value. The bio is there, the young women modeling the costumes all look like they're having fun with it. And the Hillary haters who propagate the link, layering on their contempt and astonishment, give it spin that is useful for those who'd love to scream with horror at that old reflexive misogyny, risen from the grave once again.

By the way, back in 1969, college kids didn't refer to each other as "hipsters." A "hipster" would have been a man from the past, more of a 1950s beatnik in some smoky urban jazz club. The word the Hillary campaign has apparently forgotten is: "hippie."

Hippie, oddly enough, has become a go-to Halloween costume in recent years, perhaps because it's easy to put together from crap you might have around the house, like the old-standbys of the 1950s and 60s: bum and gypsy.

"The thing that's struck me about all the hype for the Sochi Games is that it seems to be completely centered around the host city and the spectacle of the Olympic Games..."

"... and not nearly as much as usual about the athletes competing. Is it because of the dearth of American medal hopes in figure skating, and that I don't care about any of the flippity-flip 'extreme' sports?"

We watched a little of the opening ceremony stuff last night. The intro historico-travelogue film montage — with a fleeting glimpse of a statue of Lenin — had me welling with involuntary and inexplicable feelings of love for Russia. I suspect a vast communist conspiracy. But then the athletes in matching parkas marching out behind flags seemed absurd. "How is this entertainment?" I cried out in pain. The announcer lady was burbling about the great degree of enthusiasm with which some athlete with few (if any) teammates was waving his country's flag and declaring that Great Britain's jackets were the best so far. "It might work all right for people who really love flags or who get into the fashion-show aspect of the jackets, like, oh, blue with red trim, excellent!" I said, but that was the next morning, after we shut off the TV and crashed for 8 hours.

ADDED: You can see the film montage here along with by Ed Driscoll's criticism of it as praising communism.  The text of the voiceover is:

The towering presence, the empire that ascended to affirm a colossal footprint. The revolution that birthed one of modern history’s pivotal experiments. 

I don't hear praise there, but the refraining from criticism, excusable as the etiquette of a guest. To call something a "pivotal experiment" is not to say that it was a good idea or that it produced a good result. It's certainly accurate to call it an experiment and pivotal. And look at the next line:

But if politics has long shaped our sense of who they are, it’s passion that endures. 

This asks use to turn away from the usual thoughts about politics and look at the people and their "passion."

As a more reliable right to their collective heart. 

I'm not sure the word there is "right," but if not, what is it? "Relic"? It's very emotive semi-gibberish, but this reinforces the idea that it is the Russian people we ought to think about now. Admittedly, "collective" sounds commie.

What they build in aspirations lifted by imagination. What they craft, through the wonder of every last detail. How magical the fusion of sound and movement can be. How much a glass of distilled perfection and an overflowing table can matter. 

This part bordered on capitalistic — all the great things Russians have made. (And all the vodka they drink.)

Discover the Russian people through these indelible signatures. Discover what we share with them through the games that open here tonight.

This is mostly a softly fuzzy invitation to think of the host country as its people, even as the Olympics invite us to think of the athletes from the different countries as the individuals they are. Let's concentrate on what we share, rather than where governments disagree. Feel the love. As noted in my original post, this minute-long click really worked on me at an emotional level, despite my intellectual perception of bullshit, inanity, sentimentality, and subliminal communist propaganda.

"America 'Can Do Better'..."

A Drudgtaposition.

Driscoll is talking about the photo of Obama that happens to have a portrait of George Washington in the background, but that Drudge page he links to begins with a very striking picture of the new Pope, lying prone — with the quote "Respond to evil with good"— and a big closeup of a cute baby getting a spoonful of mush — with the headline "Putin Orders Ban on Adoptions By Foreign Gay Couples."

Graphically, the horizontality of the Pope corresponds to the spoon, but if that's expressing an analogy, it could be: 1. The Pope's advice is pap, 2. The Pope's advice is the simple nourishment that Putin would take from helpless babies, or 3. Sexual perversion (is the Pope humping the rug and what does Putin think gay people put in a baby's mouth?!!!).

ADDED: Sorry that #3 is inflammatory, but I'm just being honest about the alternative interpretations of the imagery. #3 is especially justified by the phallic imagery on either side of the Obama photo. Atop the left column, there's an upright microphone (representing the newly dead record producer Phil Ramone), and atop the right column there's Kim Jong-un (and another N. Korean) aggressively pointing fingers or guns or some sort of metal cylinders.

What Carla Bruni says Michelle Obama said about being First Lady.

"It’s hell. I can’t stand it!"

Oh, Carla, you attention whore. I want the whole context and the inflection. I can think of a hundred ways those words could have been spoken (assuming they were spoken). There's a way to say it that actually means "of course, it's wonderful." There's a context in which it refers only to a part of the experience, such as the way you don't get much time alone with your husband anymore.

But Carla appropriates the line to spice up the book she's selling.

I'm giving Michelle a complete pass on this one.

ADDED: Ed Driscoll assembles a lot of background material, including something I said a while ago.

"Red meat, white meat, blue meat, meat-o-f**king-rama. You will eat it. Because not eating meat is a decision."

"Eating meat is an instinct! Yeah! And I know what it’s about. 'I don’t want to eat the meat because I love the animals. I love the animals.' Hey, I love the animals too. I love my doggy. He’s so cute. My fluffy little dog... He’s so cute — There’s the problem. We only want to save the cute animals, don’t we? Yeah. Why don’t we just have animal auditions. Line ‘em up one by one and interview them individually. 'What are you?' 'I’m an otter.' 'And what do you do?' 'I swim around on my back and do cute little human things with my hands.' 'You’re free to go.' 'And what are you?' 'I’m a cow.' 'Get in the f**king truck, ok pal!' 'But I’m an animal.' 'You’re a baseball glove! Get on that truck!'"

Denis Leary, quoted a propos of the James Lee, the now-dead manifesto guy.

It's Let's Talk Like Rahm Emanuel Day!

Come on, everybody! It's exciting. It's liberating.

Somebody not talking straight to you?

"Take your f***ing tampon out and tell me what you have to say."

Dog getting under foot?

"I’m going to kill that f***ing dog."

(Those 2 quotes are from this Ed Driscoll piece, where I arrived via Instapundit.)

What's worse, the tampon remark or threatening the dog?
	Threatening the dog, because I love pets.
	Threatening the dog, because death is horrible.
	The tampon remark, because it implies that women are inferior to men.
	The tampon remark, because it's so odd and icky.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: Tung Yin notes a semi-scientific test that might explain the connection between Rahm's way of talking and his success. It's all about pain.