"Erika Kirk is walking a fine line...."

Here, that's a gift link to The Washington Post.

I was puzzling over that headline at 4 a.m., but I'm only getting to blogging it now, and I don't want to go on too long at this point. So I'll just give you a numbered list and leave it to you.

"I’ve been saying for a while that the gender-neutral 'they/them' was going to become even more widespread. As a linguist..."

"... who studies the ways language changes, I noted the rise in people resisting the gender binary and got caught up in — and perhaps even biased toward — what I processed as a pronominal revolution. But surveys show that the number of young people identifying as nonbinary has decreased considerably over the past two years. Binary genders are on the rise again, and therefore so are the pronouns most closely associated with them...."

Writes John McWhorter, designating "He and she" as item #7 of the "Words and Phrases" list in his section of "The Year in Lists."

And that happens to be my last gift link of the year from The New York Times, so enjoy reading all the items on all the lists.

Jennifer Weiner has "9 Retrograde Moments for Women." I guess there were only 9, because if you'd had a 10th, wouldn't you go for the cliché of a 10 item list? And yet Weiner made a single item out of Erika Kirk and Usha Vance. Was it "retrograde" to put them together? Yes, but it wasn't Weiner's doing. Some people on the internet did it: they talked about JD Vance divorcing Usha and marrying Erika Kirk. Was that important enough to repeat? Weiner only purports to give us "moments"....

The ignominious Chia Pet deployed against Bari Weiss.

The headline at Variety is "Big Advertisers Appear Wary of CBS News’ Bari Weiss Town Hall Format." 

Not only is there that dismissive rhyme — "Wary of... Bari" — there's the attack of the Chia Pet:

The news special aired at 8 p.m. on Saturday, one of the least-watched hours in broadcast TV. And that may have contributed to a relative dearth of top advertisers appearing to support the show. During the hour, commercial breaks were largely filled with spots from direct-response advertisers, including the dietary supplement SuperBeets; the home-repair service HomeServe.com; and CarFax, a supplier of auto ownership data. Viewers of of the telecast on WCBS, CBS’ flagship station in New York, even saw a commercial for Chia Pet, the terra-cotta figure that sprouts plant life after a few weeks....

The ignominious Chia Pet!

For a substantive overview of the town hall, you might read "7 highlights from Erika Kirk's CBS News town hall." Did you watch it? Did you watch it in the actual 8 p.m. time slot? Do you feel you ought to watch it, as you obviously still can, on YouTube, or do you feel you already know everything Bari Weiss and Erika Kirk might say to each other? 

Love your enemy/hate your enemy — What did Trump really say at the Charlie Kirk memorial?

I see the headline in the NYT, framing Trump's statement in the conventional anti-Trump manner: "'I Hate My Opponent': Trump’s Remarks at Kirk Memorial Distill His Politics/President Trump has been fueled by grievance and animosity over the course of his political and public life."

Is Trump a hater? I'm not going to sift through everything he's done "over the course of his political and public life," but I will read the transcript of his speech — which I listened to live — and zero in on the part about hating his adversaries, which is getting attention from his adversaries, as I presume he knew it would:

"The world needs... young people pointed in the direction of truth and beauty."

Said Erika Kirk in her speech at the memorial to her husband yesterday.

And then Elon Musk, who was also there in the stadium, said something that to my ear is similar: "He was killed because... because he was showing people the light. And he was killed by the dark." And he immediately restated his point: "Charlie was murdered by the dark for showing people the light."

Truth and beauty/Light and dark — it is emphatically not nonbinary. There is a longing for clarity — an alternative to nihilism. It is offered now, especially to the young. It is not what they have been used to hearing, and it may be exactly what they want, especially after Dark showed its eagerness to murder Light. Dark could not prove Light wrong. 

"My husband Charlie — he wanted to save young men just like the one who took his life.... That young man — I forgive him."

"I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do."

Erika Kirk forgives the man who murdered her husband:

"My husband Charlie...he wanted to save young men just like the one who took his life...that young man...

I forgive him.

I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do." pic.twitter.com/Pd1yGRMRVw

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) September 21, 2025

That was the strongest moment of the 5-hour memorial, the widow forgiving the murderer — because it is what Christ did.

The other exceptionally strong statement of Christianity came from Marco Rubio:

Marco Rubio summoned his inner Father Mike Schmitz and explained the entire story of salvation history in under 90 seconds.

🙌❤️🔥✝️ pic.twitter.com/W7ZO11CjQ3

— Bree Solstad (@BreeSolstad) September 21, 2025

Should the widow stand back and know that her place is to quietly mourn and to express no opinions?

I'm reading The Washington Post: "Erika Kirk emerges as vocal public figure, redefining role of political widow/Vocal and stridently determined to advance her husband’s work, she has embraced her public role" (gift link).

In modern times, the number of women who have found themselves in this unenviable and tragic situation in the United States is small. The group is largely limited to the widows of the men slain in the tempestuous mid-1960s. Some biographers who chronicled the lives of those men — Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and John F. and Robert F. Kennedy — are wary of drawing historical comparisons that might by extension elevate Charlie Kirk, who made numerous disparaging remarks about Black people...

Inflammatory characterization casually inserted. 

... to the stature of an iconic civil rights leader or a president. But they see important distinctions between the ways the widows of the ’60s acted in their unwanted roles and the ways Erika Kirk is defining it.

“It’s such a different era and the partisanship is so much more extreme now,” said David Margolick, who wrote a book on the relationship between Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and whose journalism is being turned into a documentary about Coretta Scott King and the Kennedy widows flying RFK’s body home after he was killed. “And people are all in their respective political communities and have very little interaction with people on the other side. In [the era of the earlier widows], as partisan as it was — and some people really hated the Kennedys — there was respect for the presidency that crossed party lines. The mourning wasn’t red and blue.”

The New York Times embeds Erika Kirk in the tradition of Right Wing Women.

I'm reading "Erika Kirk Takes a Leadership Role in Turning Point USA/After years spent emphasizing family life in the public eye, she will now run the group her husband built."

She is one of a raft of conservative female leaders right now who are building prominent careers and public-facing lives while emphasizing a particular message: telling young women to focus on getting married and starting a family, rather than having a public-facing life....

Oh, the contradiction! You advocated prioritizing home life, so what are you doing here? It feels so rude to confront the new widow like that. But perhaps the NYT feels it doesn't really count because it's talking about a whole "raft" of women.

"Charlie always believed that God's design for marriage and the family was absolutely amazing.... Over and over he would tell all these young people to come and find their future spouse..."

"... become wives and husbands and parents, because he wanted you all to experience what he had and still has. He wanted everyone to bring heaven into this earth through the love and joy that comes from raising a family.... My husband laid down his life for me, for our nation, for our children; he showed the ultimate and true covenantal love.... I honestly have no idea what any of this means — I know that God does, but I don't — but Charlie, baby, I know you do too. So does our Lord.... The evildoers responsible for my husband's assassination have no idea what they have done. They killed Charlie because he preached a message of patriotism, faith, and of God's merciful love. But... if you thought that my husband's mission was powerful before, you have no idea what you have just unleashed across this entire country and in this world. You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.... The movement my husband built will not die.... No one will ever forget my husband's name, and I will make sure of it. It will become stronger, bolder, louder, and greater than ever...."

Said Erika Kirk last night.