"It was cool, though, I mean, pshhwww, it's terrible...."

 Said George Clooney, making some funny faces, about the Louvre heist.

"[T]he younger Mr. Biden named names, unleashing a profane tirade against a host of perceived enemies, including..."

"... the senior Biden aide Anita Dunn; the Democratic éminences grises David Axelrod and James Carville; the Obama administration alumni who built Crooked Media, a booming liberal podcast network; the CNN host Jake Tapper; and the actor George Clooney.... ... Mr. Biden dismissed Mr. Clooney as 'a brand' and Mr. Carville as someone who 'hasn’t run a race in 40 years.' Mr. Axelrod, he said, 'had one success in his political life, and that was Barack Obama, and that was because of Barack Obama.' The former Obama aides behind Crooked Media and its 'Pod Save America' flagship, he said, were 'four white millionaires that are dining out on their association with Barack Obama from 16 years ago.' And he asserted that Ms. Dunn, who ran the White House press operation throughout most of Mr. Biden’s presidency, had made '$40 to $50 million' from the Democratic Party.... Mr. Biden saved perhaps his strongest venom for Mr. Tapper.... 'What influence does Jake Tapper have over anything? He has the smallest audience on cable news'..."

From "Hunter Biden Trashes Democrats He Saw as Betraying His Father/In a profane tirade, the former president’s son sought to settle scores with Anita Dunn, David Axelrod, James Carville and George Clooney. Among others" (NYT).

I put the video up last night, in this post. There, I highlighted Hunter's assertion that his father's problem during his debate with Trump was the drug Ambien. What I'm highlighting in this second post is Hunter's naming and blaming a lot of Democrats. 

Responses from the Democrats Hunter named:

Axelrod: "Never have the words ‘no comment’ been more appropriate."

Carville: "[The Bidens] got into this frenzy that they were these people who were disrespected and that’s their whole culture."

Tommy Vietor, a “Pod Save America” co-host: "It’s good to see that Hunter has taken some time to process the election, look inward, and hold himself accountable for how his family’s insular, dare I say arrogant at times, approach to politics led to this catastrophic outcome we’re all now living with." 

I don't want to read a Clooney-centric account of how the Democrats allowed Joe Biden to win the nomination and then swiped it from him.

The New Yorker has this excerpt from Jake Tapper's new book: "How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump/At a fateful event last summer, Barack Obama, George Clooney, and others were stunned by Biden’s weakness and confusion. Why did he and his advisers decide to conceal his condition from the public and campaign for reëlection?"

I bailed early, preferring to interact with Grok. My prompts, exactly as I wrote them, presented in order and with zero Grok-written material:

1. Summarize this article: https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/how-joe-biden-handed-the-presidency-to-donald-trump

2. I skimmed it and it seemed so Clooney-focused it put me off

3. I'd like a critical perspective on the piece that is skeptical of this interest in Clooney. I don't care to read a step by step story of what happened as Biden got excluded from the nomination he won in the primaries. I want much more skepticism about the way the Democratic Party allowed him to win the nomination in the first place and got itself into the seeming (or bullshit) jam it was in last summer

4. Did Democrats engineer a nomination for Harris that she couldn't have won in a fair primary or did Democrats accidentally wait too long to lose hope in Biden and find themselves in the position where they couldn't avoid giving it to Harris? And how did the mainstream media contribute to the problem?

5. Make a clear and concise list of why Tapper's going Clooney-centric exemplifies what's wrong with mainstream media politics and with the Democratic Party

I've spared you any material written by Grok, because I presume you don't want to read what was written without a human mind. But I think what Grok wrote is more useful than what's in The New Yorker.

In case you want to read how the machine reacted to my prompts, here's the link.

"My wife is going to hate it because nothing makes you look older than when an older guy dyes his hair."

Said George Clooney, quoted in the London Times, with a photo that shows how right he is:

I clicked on that headline because I thought it was going to be about brown clothing. Did you know the color brown is a fashion trend? See, from last October, "Chocolate Brown Is Fall’s Breakout Color Trend" (Harper's Bazaar).

But it's about brown hair. I notice George only speaks for older guys. 

AND: So you go to some play because a famous actor — famously handsome actor — is in it, but then there's just some guy on stage and he doesn't even look like him. But it's not supposed to look like him. It's supposed to look like Edward R. Murrow!

My curiosity about the term "permission structure" pays off.

I'd never noticed it before, but I heard it twice, in rapid succession, in the new NYT "Daily" podcast that I was listening to on my sunrise run:

[This ad] employs this device of the disillusioned Trump voter as a stand-in for the viewer. It's a permission structure for the small sliver of undecided voters who might have voted for Trump before to say: It's okay, there are other people just like you, other people who don't think that Donald Trump is good anymore.... 

Here is a Harris supporting celebrity saying he is disillusioned with what she Harris has said. It's the same permission structure for Harris. You have a white lady saying: You know what? Maybe I can actually vote for Kamala Harris. 

"Permission structure" was used as if it's a standard term, so I wanted to get up to speed. 

I can see that Obama used it back in 2013, but I'm interested in its repeated use in the last few days. I'm seeing it first in Ms. Magazine, on November 1: "New Ad Creates ‘Permission Structure’ for Men to Support Harris":

"Academy Award-winning actor George Clooney called one of President Biden’s top aides last month to complain about the president’s criticism of the International Criminal Court’s action against Israeli leaders..."

"... a case his wife, Amal Clooney, worked on, according to three people familiar with the conversation. Clooney called Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president, to express concern about Biden’s denunciation of arrest warrants sought by ICC prosecutors for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, especially his use of the word 'outrageous.'... The actor was also upset about the administration’s initial openness to imposing sanctions on the ICC because his wife might be subject to the penalties, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private conversation. Clooney’s call came just weeks before he is set to appear at a fundraiser for Biden’s reelection campaign June 15 in Los Angeles. His concerns spread throughout Biden’s orbit.... In 2020, [George Clooney] donated more than $500,000 to Biden’s campaign effort and co-hosted a virtual fundraiser for him that raised $7 million.... The White House later said sanctions against the ICC were 'not the right answer'...."

From "George Clooney called White House to defend wife’s work on Israel warrants/Biden had sharply criticized a move by the International Criminal Court to issue warrants for Israeli leaders" (WaPo).

Gazumping.

I learned a new word just now. Seeing it in a headline — "Clooneys gazumped me for French vineyard, rival buyer says" (London Times) — I thought it might be a made-up word. But the OED identifies it as a slang word that goes back to 1928:

1928 Daily Express 19 Dec. 2/7 ‘Gazoomphing the sarker’ is a method of parting a rich man from his money. An article is auctioned over and over again, and the money bid each time is added to it. ...

1934 P. Allingham Cheapjack xv. 189 Grafters speak a language comprised of every possible type of slang... Quite a number of words are Yiddish. These include ‘gezumph’, which means to cheat or to overcharge. 

1971 Guardian 8 Nov. 13/2 ‘Gazumping’—a system of profiteering by double selling and pushing prices up—is creeping into the property market... The word is car trade slang for selling to one buyer and then, as values rise, to a second buyer.

It means "To swindle; spec. to act improperly in the sale of houses, etc."

As the Times article notes, gazumping violates French law.

Guy Azzari, the buyer’s lawyer, alleges his client had agreed a price of €6 million (£5.14 million) in August for the six-bedroom 18th-century bastide set in 172 hectares that include woodland, an olive grove, a vineyard and an ornamental lake.

The seller is accused of raising the price after the offer was accepted, and it says here that there's "no suggestion that the Clooneys did anything unlawful, or indeed knew of the alleged gazumping." 

"Gazumping" should not be confused with "galumphing," which is one of the many words coined by Lewis Carroll in "Jabberwocky." "Galumphing" is clumsy, heavy walking. And we know the dashing George and the lovely Amal would never do that.

He left it dead, and with its head/He went galumphing back....

That's got nothing to do with celebs attaching their names to the trendiness of rosé wine.

George Clooney has been cutting his own hair for 25 years — with a Flowbee!

Actor/director George Clooney tells @thattracysmith that he's been cutting his own hair for years - by using the Flowbee haircutting machine https://t.co/SWYT8pFC8h pic.twitter.com/bKepm5LQCM

— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) November 29, 2020

He didn't have to adapt for the lockdown. He was pre-adapted. Part of the adaptation, of course, was being devastatingly handsome. And having hair "like straw."

ADDED: For a less absurd — less elaborate — self-cutter, try this.

"Brunei's interpretation of Islamic law now imposes death by stoning as a punishment for sex between men and adultery, as well as amputation of limbs for theft."

"Lesbian sex can carry a penalty of up to 10 years in jail, the BBC reports... The new laws stipulate the death penalty for offenses such as rape, adultery and the defamation of the Prophet Muhammad, though the death penalty was already on the books in Brunei and the country has not carried out an execution since 1957....  Ellen DeGeneres, George Clooney and other high-profile celebrities have called for a boycott of Brunei-owned hotels in protest of these additions to the penal code. Brunei Investment Agency, a government-owned corporation founded by 72-year-old Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, owns luxury hotels across the U.S., U.K. and Europe, including both the Beverly Hills Hotel and Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles, The Dorchester in London and Hotel Principe di Savoia in Milan....  Brunei released a statement on Saturday defending the laws, saying the penal code criminalizes and deters acts against the teaching of Islam and 'aims to educate, respect and protect the legitimate rights of all individuals, society or nationality of any faiths and race.'"

From "Death By Stoning Among Punishments In New Brunei Anti-LGBT, Criminal Laws" (NPR).

There's a phrase, "legitimate rights."

"Look, I acted for a long time and, you know, I’m 56. I’m not the guy that gets the girl anymore. Well, yeah, I shouldn’t be the guy that gets the girl."

"But, look, if somebody’s got Paul Newman in The Verdict, I’d jump. But there aren’t that many like that. Acting used to be how I paid the rent, but I sold a tequila company for a billion fucking dollars. I don’t need money."

Only one person on the face of the earth can say that. George Clooney.

Meanwhile, his new movie "Suburbicon" is a real stinker.

From the Anthony Lane review in The New Yorker:

Suburbicon might as well be populated exclusively by Klansmen; not a voice is raised in the [black family's] favor.... Taking a wild guess, I get the feeling that, in Clooney’s opinion, the United States, in the epoch of Eisenhower, had a problem with racism. Jeez, who knew? The film’s indignation is clearly fuelled by the rancor that has persisted into the epoch of Trump, but there’s a hitch. So repelled is Clooney by the response of white suburbia to African-Americans, and so keen is he to insure that we share his outrage at what they endured, that he quite forgets to be interested in them. We learn next to nothing about Mr. and Mrs. Mayers (their first names are a mystery), nor do we listen to their conversations. The wife is charged twenty dollars for a carton of milk by the manager of a supermarket, and she hangs up her washing outside with a bevy of protesters banging drums and crowing, only feet away, but, while her dignity in the face of such taunts is noble, that’s all we know of her. It’s purely in relation to white contempt, in other words, that she is granted dramatic presence. To say that she and her husband are a backdrop would be going too far, but the black plot and the white plot scarcely touch. Is that what Clooney intended?

Knowing yet not knowing: Matt Damon positions himself vis a vis Harvey Weinstein.

"You had to spend about five minutes with him to know that he was a bully, he was intimidating — that was his legend... When people say everybody knew, yeah I knew he was an asshole. He was proud of that.... I knew he was a womanizer. I wouldn't want to be married to the guy, but it's not my business... But this level of criminal sexual predation is not something that I ever thought was going on" (Hollywood Reporter).

He just didn't know the level.

The clues were there and seen, but he claims not to have made any of the inferences that will put him in a bad light now.

At the same link, George Clooney is similar but different in 2 key ways:

"Harvey would talk to me about women that he'd had affairs with... I didn't necessarily believe him quite honestly, because to believe him would be to believe the worst of some actresses who were friends of mine.... The idea that this predator — this assaulter — was out there silencing women like that ... it's beyond infuriating.... There has to be a comeuppance for all of this. All of the people who were part of that chain. And then, we have to make it safe for people to feel that they can talk about it."

1. Clooney seems as though he had a simpatico relationship with Harvey. He had confidential conversations with him, and he's using the word "affairs" to refer to what Harvey did — even as he says that if the stories were true what the women were doing would be the worst.

2. And— unlike Damon — Clooney doesn't seem to have experienced Harvey as an "asshole." Clooney disapproves of the behavior that has come out recently, but he doesn't say that the man he knew first hand was "a bully... intimidating... an asshole."

"Steve Bannon is a pussy. Steve Bannon is a little wannabe writer who would do anything in the world to have had a script made in Hollywood."

"He wrote one of the worst scripts I’ve ever read—and I’ve read it. His fake Shakespeare-rap script about the L.A. riots. Oh, you’ve gotta read it! It’s just fuckin’ terrible...."

Said George Clooney.

The thing we've gotta read is "The Thing I Am." According to Bannon's co-writer, Julia Jones, it's "a rap film [based on Shakespeare’s Coriolanus] set in South Central during the L.A. riots." Here, experience a table read of the proposed film.

Clooney continues: "Here’s the truth: if Steve Bannon had Hollywood say, ‘Oh, this is really great, and a really good script,’ and had they made his movie, he’d still be in Hollywood writing his fuckin’ movies and kissing my ass to be in one of his fuckin’ films! That’s who he is. That’s the reality. Someone in Hollywood should’ve given him a script—or approved one of his scripts—just to keep him out of the right wing."

The world is full of would-be artists. Famously, Hitler was one. But there's no way to cherry-pick the Hitlers and mini-Hitlers and hand them artistic success to keep them from deploying their visions outside of the imagination-land of art.


(Downloaded from "Was Hitler's art work good?" where you can see more of the painting that if only people might have seen fit to love at the time, so much suffering could have been averted.)

"Would I like to be the next president? Oh, that sounds like fun."

Sarcasm, from George Clooney, who once said "Who would ever want to live like that?"

"Amal must go rest her neck now. It hurts from looking down on all of us."/"She is effing loving her new Hollywood lifestyle..."

"... She looks like she knew the paps were coming. He looks like he knows she called them from the restaurant."/"I want this bitch's life, and I'm not alone. She knows it."/"Sure, why not, right?"

Comments at a Tom & Lorenzo post showing paparazzi photos of George Clooney and Amal Clooney emerging from a Beverly Hills restaurant. Tom & Lorenzo call attention to what appears to be deliberate posing for the purpose of displaying a handbag (which, once you think about it, makes the 4th photo ludicrous (in case you want something to think about other than how insanely good-looking these people are)).

"Why do so many people think he’s good? Have you looked at his paintings?"

"In real life, trees are beautiful. If you take Renoir’s word for it, you’d think trees are just a collection of green squiggles."

Renoir is considered a good painter because his work is featured in museums, [Max] Geller added. But upon further inspections of his paintings, that line of argument “seems pretty fallacious”....

The Renoir Sucks at Painting... Instagram account... has even received the wrath of Genevieve Renoir, who says she is the painter’s great-great-granddaughter.

On one photo, Genevieve commented: “When your great-great-grandfather paints anything worth $78.1m dollars … then you can criticize. In the meantime, it is safe to say that the free market has spoken and Renoir did not suck at painting.”

Geller, who turned her comment into its own post on the account, said: “I think that is one of the most absurd and insane arguments for anything, the idea that we should let the free market dictate quality.”

Ms. Renoir's argument — staunchly opposed by Geller — bears an intriguing similarity the old free-speech argument that Oliver Wendell Holmes made back in 1919: "[T]he best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market."

Would you call that — using Geller's words — "most absurd and insane argument for anything, the idea that we should let the free market dictate quality."

Stephen Colbert likens talking about Trump with eating Oreos...

... in a bit — from the new show — that begins with Trump's never-eating-Oreos-again routine.

That was pretty funny... and I'd like it more if the clips were embeddable.

Also, Jeb Bush was on the show. Here's the full episode. Jeb comes in about 10 minutes from the end. I thought Colbert handled it very nicely, even as, at one point, he outright tells Bush that there's no way he'd ever vote for him. That's one way to handle bias. Lay it out there. [CORRECTION: Actually, Colbert said there's "a nonzero chance" he'd vote for Bush. I missed the "non" on first hearing.]

Colbert also pointed out his own brother in the audience and got the brother to shake his head "no" to the question whether he agreed with Colbert politically. Colbert's points were: 1. We can get along and be good with each other even though we don't agree about politics, and 2. Jeb must be different from his brother in some ways too, right? Accepting the invitation to knock his brother, Jeb said that George spent too much money and didn't stay true to the GOP brand: limited government.

Other comments about the show:

1. Lovely filmed opening that began with the national anthem in the setting of a baseball game, proceeding to other places around the country, and ending on the baseball field with the ump saying "Play ball!" [IN THE COMMENTS: Mark says the umpire, whose face we only see in the end when he tears off the mask, was Jon Stewart. That punchline missed me. Looked like a generic grumpy old man.]

2. The band is weak, a bunch of pretty boys. I miss Paul Shaffer. And why did they move the band over to the right? Paul was always on the left. Band on the right is the "Tonight Show" set-up.

3. I was watching the show in the morning, having DVR'd it, because I go to bed early, so I particularly liked the interaction, via TV screen, with Jimmy Fallon, and Colbert demonstrating that he was TIVOing Jimmy's show. The 2 men aren't really in competition in the modern world, and who beats whom is a non-issue in the world of anyone with any technology at all. The old Leno-vs.-Letterman drama is passé.

4. Note the consistent theme of friendship and niceness.

5. George Clooney was the first guest but I jumped over those parts. I can't be sitting around watching television in the morning. I did see that George was looking quite orange, which should have been embarrassing after a couple of jokes, earlier in the show, about Donald Trump's strange orange coloration.

6. Mavis Staples, a good idea for the first guest, but she's not the singer she once was. The song was "Everyday People."  There were a bunch of other singers that we were supposed to recognize, but I couldn't.

7. I don't like to redo tags, as noted yesterday, so Colbert's show remains "The Colbert Report" in the Althouse tags.

"We cannot be told we can’t see something by Kim Jong-un, of all fucking people.... we have allowed North Korea to dictate content, and that is just insane."

Said George Clooney.

ALSO: Obama said: "We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States... I would have told [Sony executives], do not get into a pattern in which you’re intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks."

Pushing back against George Clooney and his new wife — a lawyer who is working for the Greek government, trying to get Britain to return the Elgin marbles.

"[I]t is time to put aside the wilful misinformation and cheap innuendo that masks the genuine debt that everyone — most especially Greece — owes to Lord Elgin," writes Dominic Selwood.

Should all museums give back everything that does not come from a randomly circumscribed geographic radius around each museum? Should the Louvre return the Mona Lisa to Florence, even though it was purchased lawfully by the French royal family? Should the J Paul Getty Museum in New York hand back all its Greek, Roman, medieval, and European art and sculpture, including many of the world’s most famous pieces? What about France returning the Bayeux Tapestry to England? Or Japanese museums sending back American rock memorabilia? Maybe Venice should give back the Horses of St Mark if we are now only allowed to see things where they were made?

These are facile arguments. Looting and criminality should be deplored and punished. But antiquities, like everything else, can be legitimately purchased or gifted, and we should celebrate museums that have quite properly acquired collections that educate and inform the visiting public.

Overarching this whole debate, the romantic notion that the marbles could simply be tacked back onto the Parthenon is deeply misguided....

How bad was Joel McHale, the (official) comedian at last night's White House Correspondents Dinner?

At last night's White House Correspondents Dinner, the official comedian — insert typical joke about how they're all comedians — was Joel McHale, whose comic gimmick seemed to be reading bad jokes off cards and then ad-libbing about how that was a poor joke. For example:

I am a big fan of President Obama. I think he’s one of the all-time great presidents, definitely in the top 50. Please explain that to Jessica Simpson. You’re right, that was low.

That came early on and was followed by what might have been his only rough treatment of Obama:

All right, how about the president’s performance tonight, everyone? Sir, it’s amazing that you can still bring it with fresh, hilarious material. My favorite bit of yours was when you said you would close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. That was a classic. That was hilarious, hilarious. Still going.

Detainee Obamedy. Obama laughed and laughed. I think he mouthed something like "I'm still workin' on it."

George Clooney's big party for Obama in a tent — not in his house — on his basketball court.

WaPo reports:

“We raised a lot of money because everybody loves George. They like me, they love him. And rightfully so. Not only is he an unbelievable actor, but he is one of those rare individuals who is at ease with everybody. He seems to occupy a constant state of grace, and uses his extraordinary talents on behalf of something truly important.”

Clooney listened intently to the president throughout, his hands folded as if in prayer and his chin resting on them.

His famous chin. Surely, prayers prayed with hands rested upon that chin are answered.