Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters a "basket of deplorables."

"To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorables'. Unfortunately there are people like that, and he has lifted them up."

Half of them. Just half of them. And some, I assume, are good people. (The italicized words should be familiar. If not, here.)

By the way, is a basket of deplorables anything like a binder full of women?

ADDED: Why "basket"? Because of "basket case"? From the (unlinkable) OED, "basket case" originally referred to soldiers in WWI who had lost both arms and both legs. (A 1919 U.S. government bulletin said: "The Surgeon General of the Army... denies... that there is any foundation for the stories that have been circulated... of the existence of ‘basket cases’ in our hospitals.") Later, it had come to be used quite casually to refer to mental breakdown caused by stress, like this, from 1953: "By New Year's, 1935, after three months in the new house, I realized I'd wind up a basket case if I didn't take a vacation."

AND: As long as I'm in the OED, "Deplorable" means "To be deplored or lamented; lamentable, very sad, grievous, miserable, wretched." I've noticed that "sad" is getting used a lot in this year's political discourse. Trump uses it. It's very tweetable, being only 3 characters long. But "deplorable" is a good word for speech. It makes you seem lofty, which is good for looking down on people. To "deplore" is, according to the OED, "To weep for, bewail, lament; to grieve over, regret deeply." But in speech these days, it's used quite casually. You don't really need to be wailing and weeping. It's more just frowning imperiously. That's how I see it.

I did a search of my blog archive for "deplorable." I think I've only called something "deplorable" 3 times in the 12 years of this blog: 1. "resistance to the workings of the criminal trial ," 2. some political attack ads, and 3. the "'wall of text' approach to argumentation."

It's not really one of my words. And I've never used it, even as an adjective, to refer to a person, as in "X is deplorable." Hillary used it as a noun. To call a person "a deplorable" is dehumanizing. We should just be grieving over these people, our fellow Americans.

ALSO:

Grand gesticulations over things small and large.

At Drudge just now now (click to enlarge):



In the right column, we've got Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day swearing and gesticulating over his show time getting cut down to 1 minute.

In the middle column, it's Senate candidate/lawprof Elizabeth Warren:

DOES ELIZABETH WARREN HAVE A LAW LICENSE PROBLEM?

If you keep scrolling, beyond my screen grab, there's also:

... On defensive again over heritage claim

And a picture of a stink bug...



... "Feds brace for historic stink bug outbreak..."

Did you know they made a Broadway show out of the Green Day album "American Idiot"?

And it got a great review in the NYT? Excerpt:

Who’s the American idiot being referred to? Well, as that curtain slowly rose, we heard the familiar voice of George W. Bush break through a haze of television chatter: “Either you are with us, or with the terrorists.” That kind of talk could bring out the heedless rebel in any kid, particularly one who is already feeling itchy at the lack of prospects in his dreary suburban burg.

But while “American Idiot” is nominally a portrait of youthful malaise of a particular era — the album dates from 2004, the midpoint of the Bush years, and the show is set in “the recent past” — its depiction of the crisis of post-adolescence is essentially timeless. 

Malaise... <giggle>... see previous post.

It's an odd business to be obsessing about George Bush when he's keeping such a low profile these days. He's hoping to fade into history, perhaps, but some people really miss him — miss him in the sense that they want him there in center stage to hate on, like back in the good bad old days. And now here he is, center stage, on Broadway, where they do punk rock. If there is a "malaise of [each] particular era," then I guess that says something about the one we're in.

ADDED: Sonicfrog blogs:

Ah, yes. The ggod ol’ days. Back when it was OK to hate the President. Of course, bashing Bush was not exactly edgy or breaking new ground by the time “American Idiot” came out – Dixie Chicks, Keith Olberman, and Rosie “fire has never melted steel” O’Donnell had already blazed that trail. What make the Green Day album notable was not the music – I doubt many could name a single song from the album, or hum one of the tunes – but the fact that the anti-Bush sentiment was marketed so prominently as a feature of the album.

The video that helped put a man in prison for 22 years for running a stop sign.

[VIDEO REMOVED. Available at the link.]

Is it fair?

The increasingly sophisticated multimedia presentations depict victims from cradle to grave, often with soft music in the background, tugging on the heartstrings of jurors. Defense lawyers say the videos are highly prejudicial and have sought to have them banned.

But the Supreme Court this month declined to hear challenges to two such videos, including one of Sara Weir, a dark-eyed 19-year-old who was raped and murdered in 1993. The video contains more than 90 photos of Weir and is set to the haunting tones of Enya.

(We discussed the cert. denials here.)

Prosecutors vigorously defend the videos, which are presented as part of "victim impact evidence" in death penalty and non-capital homicides and are usually put together by families, sometimes with help from law enforcement or funeral homes. With defendants able to present extensive "mitigating evidence," prosecutors say multimedia is often the best way to document the life that was extinguished and the pain of those left behind.

"You're talking about 20 minutes that actually lets the jury see these people walking and breathing and moving," said Matt Murphy, an Orange County, Calif., prosecutor.... "I can see why these videos drive defense lawyers crazy because they actually balance things out"....

Evan Young, the lawyer who failed to persuade the Supreme Court to take up the Weir video challenge, said she thinks they tilt the scales against defendants. "Without limits on the use of this technology," she wrote in her brief, "capital trials become theatrical venues, and the determination whether a defendant receives a death sentence turns on the skill of a videographer."

But of course there is a limit:

Until the early 1990s, victims and family members rarely testified about the impact of a crime, having been held back by a series of Supreme Court rulings that said such testimony would violate the defendant's constitutional rights. A 1991 Supreme Court decision reversed the prohibition, a key milestone for advocates who say victims have historically felt marginalized by the criminal justice system.

Writing for a 6 to 3 majority, then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said prosecutors could balance the virtually unlimited defense mitigation evidence by offering "a quick glimpse of the life" of the victim. But the court laid out little specific guidance beyond saying that victim impact evidence must not be "unduly prejudicial."

So the question is whether the Supreme Court should set more detailed rules. Was that video about Jesse Heller too much? If you say yes, do you think that the Supreme Court can come up with constitutional law specifying how many photographs or how many minutes of photographs are "unduly prejudicial"? Should it be said that the Constitution forbids pop songs?

Still trying to recover from that horrible "American Idol" last night...

Entertainment Weekly has some good advice for next season's final show:

Don't allow any non-Idol performers to take the stage — unless they agree to duet with one of the 12 finalists. Think about it: Instead of piping in a ''live'' feed of Gwen (who appeared to have a giant flower attached to her derriere) performing ''4 in the Morning'' with utter detachment, you could've forced her to show up at the Kodak and duet with Chris Richardson on ''Don't Speak,'' a number he'd already nailed earlier in the season. Can you imagine the watercooler buzz you'd have scored if Kiki had rescued Bette midway through her abysmal, convulsive ''Wind Beneath My Wings''? And for cryin' out loud, Tony Bennett's ''For Once in My Life'' was taken from his album Duets, and Melinda Doolittle's Memphis audition number was...''For Once in My Life.'' Do I really have to do the math for you?

Yeah, and end on time. Were they deliberately trying to screw us TiVo-users? Just because I fast-forward through all the commercials (and much of the music), you don't care about me? This is from the Village Voice's "running diary" of the show:

I got home a bit late tonight, so I'm not watching this show live; I'm seeing everything on DVR about ten minutes after it actually happens. But the show actually runs over, which means my DVR cuts off right before they reveal the goddam f[]cking winner of the season. Seriously, don't the producers know that some of us are watching this on DVR?

I'm going to say they do know, and they are not so much punishing us but training us to use the TiVo to record into the next time slot to hurt the other networks. It's a way to turn TiVo into a ratings weapon.

Here's a good line from the EW story:

And was I the only one envisioning Gladys Knight assessing the top six ladies at dress rehearsal and declaring, ''Only Melinda and LaKisha are allowed within three feet of me!''?

So true, both as an observation and as an appropriate attitude for Gladys Knight.

Anyway... I'm fine with the outcome, which I predicted back on March 21, when we were down to the final 10:

Let me just try to pick the order that they will leave (and we can look back and see how wrong I was): Chris R., Gina, Hayley, Phil, Chris Sligh, Sanjaya, LaKisha, Blake, Melinda, Jordin. So: Jordin to win.

So I'm fine that Jordin won, but now the show needs to go away for a long time so we can all forget how insufficiently enjoyable it was and, like the ninnies we are, start watching again next year. Or will some of us snap out of it?

Ah, I see that as I was writing this Jacob at Television Without Pity finally got his mini-recap up. For some crazy reason, he gives the show an A+:

The very excellent, very long night begins with a shouty, flirty duet... Ryan's "good friend" GWEN STEFANI, looking pants in a weird Astro Boy bubble tutu dress... KELLY CLARKSON!... Blake reveals that he has like fifteen powers of awesome beatboxing we didn't even know about... CARRIE UNDERWOOD, in a cute dress over pants... Carrie gives an awesome speech about her wild success. A huge contingent of awesome bald African kids... Sanjaya is compared to both Einstein and Abraham Lincoln, then performs "You Really Got Me" with Joe Perry in a wind tunnel... GREEN DAY ... ROOOOBEN... BETTE EFFIN' MIDLER sings "The Wind Beneath My Friggin' Wings" in a leather skirt and is one Parliament and a late night out from turning into Marianne Faithfull once and for all; it's cheesy and very very American Idol and unending. Randy and Paula, at this point, start making out down in the audience, while Bette Midler sings poorly and interjects God into every other line of the song, for some reason....

Blah! Well, I get it. If you watch the show, you watch for the crappiness of it, and since they over-the-top maximized the crappiness, it gets an A+. The A+ is logical. If you don't like this, why are you watching? This is the whole point.

Curating the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The WaPo has an interview with the curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Interesting facts:

• The artists these days have become so aware of the value of their collectibles that some of the bands keep an archivist on their staff.

• Bob Dylan is the artist they've had the hardest time getting donations from.

• Some artists, like Green Day, demand and get private afterhours tours of the museum, while others -- unnamed -- just go in and mingle with the riffraff.

Related post: "Notes on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" (my visit to the museum).

Top ten cars lists.

Stephen Bainbridge approves of my car choice and is impressed that I didn't buy any of the cars on the Top Ten Cars For Women Executives or the Top Ten Cars for Soccer Moms. I've never been either an executive or a soccer mom though. (I've never even been to a soccer game.) Where's the Top Ten Cars for Women Law Professors? I agree with Bainbridge that most of the cars on these lists are boring. But then most cars are boring.

Tomorrow, I'm picking up my car, and I plan to have some nice photos of it. One of the errands I need to do once I've got a car is to drive over to Schmidt's Towing and get the last few things out of the old car. There are some maps I might as well salvage, and somewhere on the floor are Tonya's good sunglasses. Also, there are six CDs in the CD player, but after the accident the button that ejects the cartridge stopped working. Any idea how to get it out? Is it acceptable to break it out with pliers or something? Well, how valuable are the CDs? Two are from the audio book "Peace Kills" by P.J. O'Rourke. The others are the four CDs we put in to drive to Milwaukee a few weeks ago: Stevie Wonder, Prince, Radiohead, and Green Day. I would like to get them out, but I don't know how. Anyway, I want to take a couple pictures of the wreck. I took a good look at it before they towed it away, but I was kind of in a daze at the time, and I'd like to see just how far in it crumpled.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers. Let me invite you over to my blog's home, where you can scroll down to Sunday, January 23, and read about the accident, then scroll up through the week, for quite a few car posts.

The death of Darrell Abbott.

I wrote earlier today about the murder of former Pantera guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott. I see in the BBC report that some people in the audience heard the murderer accuse Abbott of breaking up Pantera. Police shot the murderer, Nathan Gale, to death, so maybe we'll never know why he did it.

My post brought an email from a reader who wrote: "I was amused to see you had been to a NIN concert and now a Pantera concert as well? I shall never cease to be amazed." Well, it's less amazing than you may think. I have two sons, one born in 1981, and the other born in 1983. What music do you think they listened too? When they were in their early teens, I was happy to drive them to concerts, and I didn't just drop them off. I stayed for the show! As a result, I saw quite a few great concerts that I would never have gone to on my own. Nine Inch Nails (with an opening act of Marilyn Manson) was probably the best one I saw in those days. Sonic Youth, Green Day, and Smashing Pumpkins were the closest to something I would have been interested in on my own. Pantera was beyond the limit of what I really wanted to hear, but they were undeniably great at what they were doing, and I admired the intense commitment to that extreme form of music. I enjoyed watching the show, including the crowd of kids who just loved them, but I was watching as more of an objective outsider. The opening act was beyond what I could enjoy on any level, the only band of the many I saw in those days that I can honestly say I hated: Type O Negative. And I'm sure if any of my readers are Type O Negative fans, they don't want people like me to enjoy their band anyway.

But my son John called today and said he saw my post about Darrell Abbott. [UPDATE: The next sentence is wrong.] He said I should have said in my post that half of Pantera died: Abbott's brother, Vinnie Paul, was also murdered. [UPDATE: No, Vinnie was not among those who were murdered. Sorry for the misreporting, though it's clearly good news. I'll leave the tribute to Vinnie that follows.] Vinnie was the drummer, and he was, John tells me, a truly great drummer, who wrote the Pantera songs with his brother. The two musicians had a great style, a brilliant way of playing together in lockstep, John tells me. He says the drumbeats were so distinctive that by thinking the drumbeat, you think the song, just as normally when you think the vocal melody, you think the song. Vinnie's drumming was not just the background, John says. It was the song.

John also informs me that Darrell Abbott was not just "a" guitarist in Pantera. He was the guitarist. He says that most bands who have only one guitarist have trouble when they play concerts, because in making their records, the guitarist has recorded a continuous rhythm track and then made a separate track for the solo parts. As a result, when the band plays in concert, it seems that a second guitarist is needed to keep up the rhythm track, so it won't sound empty during the solos. But in a rock band, John says, once you have people on the stage they have to play all the time, so adding an extra guitarist can be a problem. If you just have that one guitarist, it's going to sound awkward when he switches from playing the rhythm part to doing the solo and it's going to sound too thin. What was distinctive about Abbott, John says, is that he played in concert as the sole guitarist and it sounded full the whole time and there was no awkward shift from rhythm to solo. He says that in the Pantera recordings you can hear that the rhythm guitar track does not extend under the solos. So what Abbott did on the record, he could also do single-handedly in concert. It was brilliant!

Go up in my room and get the CD of "Vulgar Display of Power," John says, and listen to the third track, "Walk." You can really hear it in that song. I do. I listen to "Walk," and I listen to "This Love." "Vulgar Display of Power" is their best album, John assures me. I've put an Amazon button for it in the sidebar, and you can hear short clips of both of those songs over there. [UPDATE: Button replaced by hot link.]

Very sad!

UPDATE: Title of the post changed to reflect the correction in the third paragraph.

ANOTHER UPDATE: MTV has a detailed article about Abbott and lots of video clips.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Interesting discussion at Metafilter. Someone wonders whether anyone has ever been murdered on stage like this before. There's a link to a Snopes page listing many performers who've had fatal heart attacks and the like on stage, but none who were murdered.

STILL MORE: An emailer notes that the great jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan was murdered on stage (by his wife).