"These guys are just weird. That's where they are.... The fascist depend on fear. The fascists depend on us going back, but we're not afraid of weird people. No, we we're a little bit creeped out, but we're not afraid."

Said Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, in audio played in the new episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "The V.P.’s Search for a V.P."

The podcast host observes that the message — "Republicans are... just too weird for America" — "does seem like it's sticking a little bit."

Is it "sticking" or is it just the word that's getting said by people who say the same word at the same time. I'm thinking of those people who all used the word "selfless" when Biden accepted getting ousted.

Here's a whole NYT article on the emergence of "weird" as the word: "One Word Has Elevated Minnesota’s Governor to the Democrats’ V.P. Wish List/'These guys are just weird,' Gov. Tim Walz, a former schoolteacher, has said of the opposition."

"There’ll always be people who say, 'Why can’t the Museum of American History tell everybody’s story?'"

"But the truth of the matter is, America’s history is too big for one building. I really think that what we did with the African American museum—which has become one of the most diversely visited museums in the world—is the right model. This is a two-sided coin. One side is about a community, about identity. But the other side is 'How does that identity shape all of us?'"

Said Lonnie G. Bunch III, quoted in "How Lonnie G. Bunch III Is Renovating the 'Nation’s Attic'/The Smithsonian’s dynamic leader is dredging up slave ships, fending off culture warriors in Congress, and building two new museums on the National Mall" (The New Yorker).

"A Sex Scandal Tanked A Presidential Front-Runner In The 1980s. Why Not Today?"

An annoying headline at FiveThirtyEight.

I haven't read this article yet. I want to state up front 2 of the reasons why I am annoyed.

1. "Sex Scandal" — The current criminal charges against Trump are not a sex scandal. We absorbed a long time ago that he has indulged in extramarital sex. He's charged with falsifying records of payments to one of his sex partners in pursuit of some amorphous criminal end having to do with winning the 2016 election. The case does depend on the premise that Trump believed voters would react strongly to knowing he'd had consensual sex with a porn star. The criminal case itself isn't a sex scandal. And it's the criminal case that is happening now and that might make us wonder why it's not hurting him today. 

2. "Tanked A Presidential Front-Runner" — I presume the 80s front-runner was Gary Hart. Gary Hart quit. Donald Trump will not quit. By making "sex scandal" the subject of the sentence, you act as though it's a force that is doing things to people. But these 2 men have made their own decisions, and if Gary Hart had had more of a Donald Trump mentality, he would have barreled on, said whatever he needed to say, distracted however he could, and maintained endless vitality and optimism. The man quit. 

Okay, now I'll read the article. Some excerpts:

"'I bear a very heavy burden of responsibility,' [Gary] Hart says, picking at a 'game plate' of elk, buffalo and quail at The Fort restaurant outside of Denver."

"If all that stuff had not happened and if I had been elected, there would have been no gulf war. H.W. wouldn’t have been president. W. wouldn’t have been president. Everything would have changed. I don’t say that to aggrandize myself. It’s just, history changed. And that has haunted me for thirty years. I had only one talent and it wasn’t traditional politics — I could see farther ahead than anybody."

Writes Maureen Dowd in "Trump and the Hart-less Presidency/After 30 years, Gary Hart still wonders what might have been."

I'm blogging this because I love the line "picking at a 'game plate' of elk, buffalo and quail." Somehow Hart and Dowd have found themselves at a table at this restaurant, and Hart orders the "game plate" of elk, buffalo and quail, presumably because that make him look like the guy he wants her to think he is, but then he only picks at it, because even after all these years and at his advanced age, he can't just be the person he really is.

And what a gasbag! "I could see farther ahead than anybody." You couldn't see far enough ahead to the part where the newsfolk you told to follow you around actually followed you around and discovered the tacky sex you were enjoying in contravention of your upstanding family-man image.

Here's the idiotic photograph that destroyed him:



And here's Hugh Jackman dressed up to play Gary Hart in a movie based on his ridiculous debacle:



The movie comes from the 2014 book "All the Truth Is Out" by Matt Bai, which I've read and blogged a couple times. Dowd tracks what Bai has written:

Before Hart, we had F.D.R., L.B.J. and J.F.K., who did not suffer politically for dalliances because the mostly male press corps had a bro-code and a blind eye. After Hart, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump got through frenzies about sexual transgressions by enduring the ridicule, enlisting their wives to defend them on TV, and attacking their accusers.

But the scratchy Hart wasn’t made that way. The adultery story enhanced the sense that he was an enigma, a story line that developed when the press learned that he had changed his name from Hartpence and fudged his age by a year....

Dowd questions Hart about whether he should have done something different. Should he have fought back, like Clinton and Trump?

In 1998, in the midst of the Clinton-Lewinsky uproar, Hart told me that he thought America might be getting more European about pols and sex, “growing up, finding out there is not a Santa Claus.” I am not sure that’s true. We have not reached any consensus on the issue, except that most strategists know better than to publicly trash the women at the center of such scandals....

But last year, in the midst of the #Metoo reckoning, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand criticized Al Franken after he was accused of groping and faux-groping for a joke picture, and told The Times that Bill Clinton should have resigned over the Lewinsky matter. The standards remain subjective, inconsistently applied and partisan....

Not sure... no consensus... subjective... Dowd is vague. And Hart must have been vague too, since there's no answer from him, other than the idea that "America might be getting more European," which seems laughably tone-deaf about how Americans feel and hopelessly far from understanding why people embrace Trump. Weren't Americans supposed to be prudes — so un-European?

Dowd began the column with an admission that she can't understand her own country:

As we fantasize about a parallel universe, where America is not a joke and our president cares about other human beings, the same questions keep swirling in our heads. What has happened to this country? Can he be stopped? When will it end? How the hell did we get here?

As we fantasize... We? "We" must mean We, the People of the more European part of America.

As of 1978, there were only 3 presidential candidates — known to Theodore White — who had not succumbed to sexual adventures with women who were not their wives.

"In his 1978 memoir, Theodore White, the most prolific and influential chronicler of presidential politics in the last half of the twentieth century, made John Kennedy and most of the other candidates he’d known sound like the Rolling Stones gathering up groupies on a North American tour. 'What was later written about Kennedy and women bothered White but little,' he wrote. 'He knew that Kennedy loved his wife — but that Kennedy, the politician, exuded that musk odor of power which acts as an aphrodisiac to of the other candidates he’d known sound like the Rolling Stones gathering up groupies on a North American tour. White was reasonably sure that only three presidential candidates he had ever met had denied themselves the pleasures invited by that aphrodisiac — Harry Truman, George Romney and Jimmy Carter. He was reasonably sure that all the others he had met had, at one time or another, on the campaign trail, accepted casual partners.” (Yes, White wrote his memoir in the reportorial third-person voice, and he used terms like 'musk odor.' It was a different time.)"

From the new book by Matt Bai, "All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid." That book is about how reporting on presidential candidates changed in 1987, when, for various reasons, the reporters who followed the candidates suddenly broke their conspiracy of silence and destroyed Gary Hart.

Yesterday, I watched one episode of "The Daily Show" and one episode of "The Colbert Report," and immediately afterwards bought the new books of the 2 authors I'd seen interviewed.

That was weird, although I see the connection to my long-time habit of feeling the need to buy 2 things if I'm going to buy 1 thing. I don't have a problem buying nothing, but 1 seems to require 2.

Here's the video of Matt Bai on "The Daily Show," pushing "All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid."

Here's the video of Walter Isaacson on "The Colbert Report," pushing "The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution."

"Anything as perfect and simple-sounding as this motto is always in danger of becoming a cliché..."

"...  but there’s nothing like putting it in the mouths of politicians to speed up that process."

What's the point of a catchphrase? You want it to catch on and then you want to control it? Speech doesn't work like that. Words have a life of their own. Phrases are born, have their narrative arcs, and sometimes they die — that is, they come to be regarded as clichés, and then no one wants to use them anymore.

The dispute at the link is over the Mitt Romney's use of “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose" from the TV show “Friday Night Lights.”

Hey, remember when Walter Mondale appropriated "Where's the beef?" from the Wendy's commercial? Where was the outrage?

Jerry Seinfeld almost critiques liberal thought.

At one point in this comic conversation with Ricky Gervais (the new episode of "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee"). This interchange comes after much talk about how the car Jerry's driving is a death trap, and Jerry has just quoted Gary Gilmore's last words ("Let's do it"), which made Ricky laugh and then get introspective:

I really think the death penalty is too depressing to even think about. I don't agree with it that the state can show that sort of form of violence.

Jerry advances the conversation in the conventional way:

What about abortion? Do you agree with that?

Ricky gestures at the stock response:

Yeah, but that's different. Isn't it?

And here's where Jerry almost does the critique of liberal legal analysis:

I guess you can just arrange things the way you like them... when you're rich, famous, like you.

Notice how he had to catch himself and re-orient himself liberally with that when you're rich, famous. The rich must be the problem. They think they can arrange the rules to serve all their interests.

And then the final "like you" is a lifeline to Ricky, who catches it, saying, "Yeah. Unlike you, who's just a guy with an old car going along the highway, laughing maniacally 'cause someone's fear was they're about to die. I should have said 'Let's do it' when I got in this car."

And Jerry is laughing maniacally, clutching the death-trap's steering wheel in helpless hilarity. Scene over. Moving on the the coffee portion of the show.

Side note: All you Althouse blog readers who used to live in Pelham Parkway — check out the signage at 4:37.

"This is sounding very much like a Gary Hart 'Monkey Business' moment..."

Follow me around!

(Click through if you want to understand the context. I'm just putting up a highlight for the folks who bellyache about having to watch a whole, long "Boringheads." The fact is, this one isn't boring, but you won't know that unless you watch it. Remember, what Gary Hart said was "follow me around... it will be boring.")

Twittering.

Do you Twitter, or have you, like me, been avoiding it? I have, but now, if you want, you can follow me -- as they say. Frankly, I think it's weird to ask people to follow you. To me, it sounds like Jesus:

"Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men."

Or Gary Hart:

"Follow me around. I don't care. I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'll be very bored."

Messianic or inanely desirous of stalkers.

But the world has changed since 32 or 1987, and the real issue for me is whether Twittering is pointlessly duplicative of blogging. The easiest way to delve into that issue is to do it. So, I guess: Follow me.

ADDED: Jac points me to something he wrote on a Metafilter post:

Could someone please explain why anyone would use Twitter? It seems like basically a blog service but with a word limit that's so restrictive that it's awkward to do links. Or like IM without the spontaneity. Or like Facebook's status updates without Facebook. So, it's like a severely limited version of a bunch of other social media, with nothing extra to compensate? What's the point?

I'm just starting, but at this point, I think:

1. There's something fun about being limited to 140 characters. As you type, you see the number counting down. That makes it breezy and game-like, which pleases me.

2. Theoretically, you are answering the question "What are you doing?" I don't know if they kick you out if you use your 140 characters in some other way, but whether you stick to the question or not, there is the idea that you are not purporting to do anything more than saying what you are doing. Presumably, you Twitter because that seems nice.

3. A Facebook page has more information, and it is more of a stable location that represents you, even if you're good about posting "status updates," which I'm not. Twitter isolates your status updates, which looks kind of snazzy. Less is more.

4. On Facebook, people have to ask you to accept them as friends, and I've never accepted people I don't more or less know. (And I only IM a few people.) On Twitter, people can just start following you. There's something simple and friendly about that.

5. That anyone can follow you affects what you're willing to write. I'm interested to see what I will write under those conditions.

6. Twitter could be used interactively with blogging, in ways that I think I'll explore.

Gary Hart: "If a majority of voters... think that it is cute to have a moose-hunting hockey mom run the country, then that's what we'll get."

Was that enough sneering for you? If not, there's a longer clip, here.

Somebody needs to tell these guys that Sarah Palin is the Governor of Alaska. And Reagan was the Governor of California.