"I don't understand why the generic labeling of a time slot on a schedule means very much. People seem to be acting as though [Trump] just sat around watching Fox News."

"These seem to be the same people who don't like anything Trump does anyway, so you'd think they'd be happy that he's just idling. Does a schedule full of meetings prove you're a hard-worker, getting things done? I've gone to a lot of meetings where I felt my time was wasted and I was being kept from working. The people who schedule a lot of meetings maybe have a bureaucratic mindset and care about the superficiality of looking busy. I think an uncluttered schedule is helpful to a person with serious work that depends on the condition and quality of his mind."

I wrote... on a public Facebook post (put up by my son John) that linked to "Nearly 60 percent of Trump’s schedule is ‘Executive Time,’ report says" (CNBC). CBC relies on this AXIOS report, which has a response from White House press secretary Sarah Sanders:

"President Trump has a different leadership style than his predecessors and the results speak for themselves. While he spends much of his average day in scheduled meetings, events, and calls, there is time to allow for a more creative environment that has helped make him the most productive President in modern history."

A more creative environment.... That — not idling — is what should really set off the anti-Trumpsters.

Ah! I remember I have a tag for idleness. Now, I want to say, even if that executive time is idling, it should be respected. From a September 2017 post of mine:

2 of my favorite books are about idlers.

First — which I wrote about back in 2006, here and here — is "Essays in Idleness" by the 13th century Buddhist monk Kenko. He wrote:

What a strange, demented feeling it gives me when I realize I have spent whole days before this inkstone, with nothing better to do, jotting down at random whatever nonsensical thoughts have entered my head.

And I said...

How much do you value your free time? Do you use it to rest and recover or do you use it to do work that, because it's done in your own time -- in time you own -- is transformed into pleasure?

The second book is "An Apology for Idlers" by Robert Louis Stevenson. As I blogged a year ago, it begins:

BOSWELL: We grow weary when idle.

JOHNSON: That is, sir, because others being busy, we want company; but if we were idle, there would be no growing weary; we should all entertain one another. Just now, when everyone is bound, under pain of a decree in absence convicting them of lèse-respectability, to enter on some lucrative profession, and labour therein with something not far short of enthusiasm, a cry from the opposite party who are content when they have enough, and like to look on and enjoy in the meanwhile, savours a little of bravado and gasconade. And yet this should not be. Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself....

Are you doing a great deal that is not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class? 

Trump sure is!!

AND: Now I'm thinking at the schoolmarms who point and children and say, "You! Sit in your seat!" And I'm thinking about the jobs that require you to punch a time clock. Have you ever had to punch a times clock? Did you ever want to literally punch a time clock? Like Buster Keaton...



... punch it like you might punch a schoolboy for smiling.

ALSO: Everybody's talking about Marie Kondo and "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up." They want help with decluttering and clearing their space of everything that's not doing them any good. If you don't want cluttered space — think about it — you don't want cluttered time.

PLUS: Commenter Hari links to the Wikipedia article, "Management by Walking Around" The term refers to "a style of business management which involves managers wandering around, in an unstructured manner." The "unplanned movement within a workplace" contrasts to "a plan where employees expect a visit from managers at more systematic, pre-approved or scheduled times."

And — brace yourself Trump-haters — "Historian Stephen B. Oates asserts that Abraham Lincoln invented the management style by informally inspecting the Union Army troops in the early part of the American Civil War."

Fake news? (And should we care if a rich person throws an expensive party?)

Ivanka & Jared went to a $7-9 MILLION one-night party // Camels, Acrobats and Team Trump at a Billionaire’s Gala https://t.co/O2Om6SBBc1

— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) February 17, 2017

Add up all the expenses in @NYT story and you don't come close to $7-9 M. I get < $850K. Something fishy? Did he buy everyone a Pontiac G6? https://t.co/3aUHDpHp2c

— Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) February 19, 2017

IN THE COMMENTS: Hari said:

2 camels @ $1500 each / 400 people = $7.50 per person
$200,000 for dinner / 400 people = $500 per person
$60,000 for service / 400 people = $150 per person
$500,000 for singer / 400 people = $1250 per person
$8 million / 400 people = $20,0000 per person
Innumerate NYT readers = Priceless!

"George Zimmerman is as black as Obama's son would have been had Obama married a white woman."

Says commenter Hari, at the post "George Zimmerman is 'one-fourth black, four times as black as Warren is Indian, though the New York Times describes him as a "white Hispanic."'"

See also, "Who is this woman?"

Don't you think Genevieve resembles Obama's mother, who was white? Imagine being a heterosexual man and feeling that you weren't supposed to be attracted to a woman who reminds you of your mother. There's this alternate never-to-be-written Obama search-for-identity book titled "Dreams From My Mother."

And "Obama — trying to be 'careful' — addresses the Trayvon Martin killing": "You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon."

***

By the way, I assumed it was conventional wisdom that men tend to feel attracted to women who remind them of their mothers, but I can see that I'm being mocked over at a blog I won't link to for referring to that relatively banal reality. Oh, hell, I don't care: here's the link.

It's really astounding how prissy lefties have become over the years. I remember when folk of the left-wing persuasion loved to delve into Freudian analysis. Now, they're so strait-laced about sex. They hew to politically required points about sexual/reproductive freedom, but there's no curiosity, no depth, no originality, no exploration of ideas. So dull!