"You think you’re woke but you’re sleepwalking through a nightmare" — slogan for the Time to Get Organized for an Actual Revolution National Tour.

"I’m with the Time to Get Organized for an Actual Revolution National Tour. We’re touring all across the country to organize thousands into the ranks of the revolution," said "a teenage-looking boy" in the "Free Speech Zone" near a Trump fundraiser in Beverly Hills.

Quoted in "'No Celebrities': Embarrassing Turnout at Trump’s Beverly Hills Fundraiser" in The Daily Beast.

I wonder, who was embarrassed? Was it the people at The Daily Beast imagining that Trump ought to be embarrassed? He doesn't seem like a guy who gets embarrassed. Especially about the lack of "celebrities." Isn't it embarrassing that Democratic Party candidates get all the celebrities?

Here's an article from late November 2016 in Vanity Fair, "Did Celebrity Endorsements Contribute to Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Upset?/The divide in celebrity endorsements between candidates was as large as ever in the 2016 presidential election—and the candidate with the most lost":

The gulf between celebrity endorsements on the Democratic versus Republican side is stark during every election, but this year, the rift seemed infinite. Hillary Clinton had Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, and even Lebron James. #ImWithHer hashtags decorated social output from Ariana Grande, Jennifer Lopez, the Kardashians, and Rihanna, as well as YouTube stars like Tyler Oakley. Clinton carried far and away the majority of celebrity seals of approval....

Many of the celebrity P.S.A.s this year leaned into the idea that no one wants to hear about politics from a Grammy/Oscar/Emmy winner. Lena Dunham’s parody of the earnest P.S.A., “Sensual Pantsuit Anthem,” tried to promote Hillary Clinton and voting through an attempted self-aware rap....

[Trump] removes middleman when it comes to endorsements. Instead of the transitive property of Katy Perry (“I’m a Katy Perry fan; Katy Perry is a Hillary Clinton fan; I’m a Hillary Clinton fan"), there’s the much simpler “I’m a Trump fan” equation, for better or worse.

Trump is his own celebrity. Is that better or worse than having other people to be your celebrities? Please, before answering, watch this video, which came out a few days before the 2016 election.



And come on, let's talk about what's embarrassing!

You think you’re woke but you’re sleepwalking through a nightmare...

ADDED: When the system tries to bring you down, listen to this, which was the actual soundtrack to this post, here at Meadhouse:

"[A]longside the statuesque Mrs. Obama in her head-to-toe gilding, [Sarah Jessica Parker] looked like an elfin wallflower in an eggplant-colored sequined dress."

Writes Robin Givhan, in "Michelle Obama can wear whatever she wants now. What she wants is sparkly thigh-high boots" (WaPo).

Is it really okay to use one woman's looks to put down the other woman standing right next to her? Because there are lots of other ways to play that humor-writing game:


Let me make a neutral, moderate, non-humorous observation. This is a very striking case of comparative size. It's sort of mind boggling. Which one is making the other look much smaller/bigger than we remember her? Or are they both doing it to the other.

And those are some strange never-ending boots Michelle is wearing. I think the women coordinated their outfits and had an idea of dousing themselves in glitter for the holidays.

Obama’s dress is from the brand’s spring 2019 collection. The boots are from spring 2018. Both are very, very expensive. Together, they represent the transformation of Balenciaga, a storied Paris-based fashion house....

Very, very expensive? I guess I have to look it up myself, but with the 2 "very"s, I'm expecting something like $50,000. Oh, they're only $4,000. Cheap! They're just some metallic stretch-fabric, right? It's flashy, but a less expensive material and easier to sew and fit than leather. And $4,000 is only slightly more than the highest-priced ticket to her show ($3,000).

Was the ensemble appropriate? Sure. Obama’s book tour is the equivalent of a literary rock concert....

I'm trying to think what kind of rock star would wear boots like that. I thought of KISS.

Whether the ensemble is flattering is beside the point. Taste is subjective, and what might be one person’s glamazon coup is another’s ostentatious faux pas....

And that's how you say something without saying it and really, really say it. I used 2 "really"s so you'll feel what I'm saying.

Remember when we talked about Hillary's shoes? That was in April 2017:



Was she like an elfin wallflower in an eggplant-colored sequined dress?

ADDED: I thought Tom and Lorenzo (my favorite fashion bloggers) would track Robin Givhan and say Michelle Obama can do anything she wants, but I was wrong:

[T]he boots are fierce.... But that horrible choir robe is quite frankly one of the worst things she has ever worn. The color is harsh and unflattering, the satin is unforgiving, and the shape and design of it completely distorts her body... Just look at her body language. Any time a non-pregnant woman spends that much time and energy touching and covering her mid-section, it’s a dead giveaway that she’s not feeling comfortable in her garment....

They love SJP's look.

"I always felt I would be running and winning against Bernie Sanders, not Crooked H, without cheating, I was right."

I always felt I would be running and winning against Bernie Sanders, not Crooked H, without cheating, I was right.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017

ADDED: Other Trump tweets reacting to Donna Brazile's spilling her story (in order from oldest to newest and with one in italics because I'm only suspecting that it belongs in the set):

Donna Brazile just stated the DNC RIGGED the system to illegally steal the Primary from Bernie Sanders. Bought and paid for by Crooked H....

....This is real collusion and dishonesty. Major violation of Campaign Finance Laws and Money Laundering - where is our Justice Department?

My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee. I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact.

Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn't looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems..

...New Donna B book says she paid for and stole the Dem Primary. What about the deleted E-mails, Uranium, Podesta, the Server, plus, plus...

....People are angry. At some point the Justice Department, and the FBI, must do what is right and proper. The American public deserves it!

The real story on Collusion is in Donna B's new book. Crooked Hillary bought the DNC & then stole the Democratic Primary from Crazy Bernie!

Pocahontas just stated that the Democrats, lead by the legendary Crooked Hillary Clinton, rigged the Primaries! Lets go FBI & Justice Dept.

Bernie Sanders supporters have every right to be apoplectic of the complete theft of the Dem primary by Crooked Hillary!

The rigged Dem Primary, one of the biggest political stories in years, got ZERO coverage on Fake News Network TV last night. Disgraceful!

"Weinstein, in an interview on CBS in April 2016, expressed a preference for Clinton over her then-rival in the Democratic primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders."

"'I'd rather go with Hillary's, who's a strong, proven leader,' he said at the time. According to an email leaked and published last fall, the Clinton campaign helped prepare Weinstein for the interview."

From "Harvey Weinstein Harassment Claims Put Obamas, Clintons in Tough Spot" (Hollywood Reporter).

That links to an Intercept piece from October 7, 2016, "HARVEY WEINSTEIN URGED CLINTON CAMPAIGN TO SILENCE SANDERS’S BLACK LIVES MATTER MESSAGE":

HACKED EMAILS SHOW that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, a longtime ally of Hillary Clinton and a major fundraiser for her 2016 campaign, urged her campaign team to silence rival Bernie Sanders’s message against police shootings of African-Americans. He suggested countering it with “the Sandy Hook issue” — a reference to Sanders’s opposition to lawsuits against gun manufacturers.

"In public, [Harvey Weinstein] presents himself as a liberal lion, a champion of women and a winner of not just artistic but humanitarian awards."

"In 2015, the year [Lauren O’Connor wrote a searing memo accusing Weinstein of sexual harassment and other misconduct], his company distributed 'The Hunting Ground,' a documentary about campus sexual assault. A longtime Democratic donor, he hosted a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton in his Manhattan home last year. He employed Malia Obama, the oldest daughter of former President Barack Obama, as an intern this year, and recently helped endow a faculty chair at Rutgers University in Gloria Steinem’s name. During the Sundance Film Festival in January, when Park City, Utah, held its version of nationwide women’s marches, Mr. Weinstein joined the parade. “From the outside, it seemed golden — the Oscars, the success, the remarkable cultural impact,” said Mark Gill, former president of Miramax Los Angeles, which was then owned by Disney. 'But behind the scenes, it was a mess, and this was the biggest mess of all,' he added, referring to Mr. Weinstein’s treatment of women."

From the searing NYT article "Decades of Sexual Harassment Accusations Against Harvey Weinstein," by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey.

Here's how searing it looks on Drudge:



Hillary looks rather fabulous there, doesn't she? Positively actressy. Kittenish!

The Times publishes Weinstein's absurd response:

Gaga solo.

The visual balance of those 2 words has me sidetracking into my favorite song from the late George Michael: Wake me up before you gogo/Gaga/I'm not planning on going solo....

Why did Lady Gaga go solo at the Super Bowl last night?

We're used to seeing the big star surrounded by lots of other stars. Last year, Beyoncé got assistance from Coldplay, Bruno Mars, Mark Ronson, Gustavo Dudamel, University of California Marching Band and Youth Orchestra L.A. The year before that Katy Perry had Lenny Kravitz, Missy Elliott, and Arizona State University Sun Devil Marching Band.

When Madonna performed in 2012, she had LMFAO, Cirque du Soleil, Nicki Minaj, M.I.A., Cee Lo Green, Andy Lewis, Avon High School Drumline, Center Grove High School Drumline, Fishers High School Drumline, Franklin Central High School Drumline, Southern University Dancing Dolls, and a 200 Person Choir consisting of Indianapolis locals.

I was going to say that Madonna seems like the closest thing to Gaga, but in Super Bowl halftime terms, she's as far from Gaga as Gaga can get.

We haven't seen a fully solo halftime act since 2010, when The Who performed... and The Who are a group and hence not as fully solo as the solo performer Gaga. And The Who were the last in a line of old-school rock acts that came out and performed like a band in a stadium. The immediately preceding years, in reverse chronological order were Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Prince (who had support from the Florida A&M University Marching 100 Band), The Rolling Stones, and Paul McCartney.

If you take one step further back, you get the notorious halftime show of 2004 when Justin Timberlake ripped Janet Jackson's bodice and exposed one nipple-shielded breast. That show was also crowded with Jessica Simpson, P. Diddy, Nelly, Kid Rock, and 2 different marching bands.

So why did Lady Gaga go it alone*? I think it was to show off the extreme energy and athleticism involved. She began perched on the rooftop, courageously dropped on a wire, powered through 13 minutes of song, and ended singing while running upstairs. It was a big brag: I'm stronger than everyone!

Was that about her or about all women? I heard someone assert that it was a "female empowerment" message. Maybe it was about Hillary Clinton. Lady Gaga was a high-visibility supporter of Hillary Clinton's failed run at the presidency. And Hillary Clinton tweeted her support for Gaga's Super Bowl "message."

The very last thing Lady Gaga did in her performance could be interpreted as a statement about Hillary: She fell off her platform.


_______________________________________

* She did have a gang of dancers with her some of the time. I was a bit puzzled by what they were supposed to be in their all-white costumes, which — with strips of fabric hanging off — seemed like bandages. They weren't behaving like mummies, and there were football helmets and shoulder pads, so I wondered if it was some sort of contribution to the football is so dangerous it should be abolished movement.

Gender equality: Naked statue division.

In August, we saw the naked Trump statue set up in Union Square in NYC, and today we get the naked Hillary statue at the Bowling Green subway entrance in downtown Manhattan.

Video... shows [Nancy, an employee at the nearby National Museum of the American Indian] struggling with the artist who erected the statue, who identified himself as 27-year-old Anthony Scioli, as he tried to prop the structure back up. At one point during the tussle, the woman sits down on the statue to prevent Scioli from picking it back up.

Free speech. It's got to work both ways. Either impromptu sidewalk statues are okay or they are not.

Here's what I said back in August:

"For most of the last year, we have seen endless hand-wringing in the news media about how crude Donald Trump is. But it seems obvious to me that it is Trump’s enemies, far more than Trump, who have gone into the gutter and, to a degree that may be unprecedented, coarsened our political life," writes John Hinderaker at Power Line, on the occasion of that naked Donald Trump statues that stood in 5 American cities yesterday. "When it comes to crude, beyond the pale attacks, Donald Trump is far more often the victim than the aggressor," Hinderaker concludes.

I agree that there is more crudeness in the attacks on Trump than coming from Trump himself. However:

1. Parallelism seems to demand that we compare what Trump himself says to what the another candidate says. If we want to look at what people other than candidates are saying about Trump, we should compare it not just to what Trump says, but to what his supporters say and to what everyone who hates Hillary says — including speech in the form of sculpture and drawings and paintings. There's some pretty crude stuff out there.

2. And shouldn't there be crude attacks on political candidates, in words and in graphic depictions? This is a grand tradition! I celebrate it. I'm thinking of Daumier's Gargantua...



Daumier went to prison for that. And I'm thinking of David Levine's Henry Kissinger.

3. The brutality is already there in politics, so we should have the words and pictures to express it. Here's Frank Zappa saying that on "Crossfire" in 1986:



"[Brutality] is already in politics. I think if you use the so-called strong words, you get your point across faster and you can save a lot of beating around the bush. Why are people afraid of words?" (And note that Donald Trump just yesterday was defending his style of speech as a way to save time: The important thing is to get to the truth and being too careful and polite "takes far too much time.")

And here's the inevitable Dylan quote, which I'm not quoting for the first time and not quoting just because Dylan won that prize. I'm quoting it for its enduring truth and pithy memorability:

But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

ADDED: Speaking of ugly statues at Bowling Green, here's an excerpt from Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton:

At Bowling Green, at the foot of Broadway, they mobbed a gilded equestrian statue of George III, portrayed in Roman garb, that had been erected to celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act. John Adams had once admired this “beautiful ellipsis of land, railed in with solid iron, in the center of which is a statue of his majesty on horseback, very large, of solid lead, gilded with gold, on a pedestal of marble, very high.” Now, for reasons both symbolic and practical, the crowd pulled George III down from his pedestal, decapitating him in the process. The four thousand pounds of gilded lead was rushed off to Litchfield, Connecticut, where it was melted down to make 42,088 musket bullets. One wit predicted that the king’s soldiers “will probably have melted majesty fired at them.”

"A Deadpan Hillary Clinton Visits ‘Between Two Ferns.'"

That's the NYT headline, which mutes what I think is really a criticism of what blatantly deserves criticism. Check it out:



The Times piece, by Katie Rogers, begins carefully:

Hillary Clinton, a candidate who has gone to great lengths to showcase the playful side of her personality, apparently wanted to prove that she can take not only a joke but a full interview of nonstop lampooning when she appeared on the mock celebrity interview show “Between Two Ferns.”

If you read far enough, you'll see that Hillary was trying to do something Obama had done, but she didn't copy his approach:

While Mr. Obama had playfully laid into Mr. Galifianakis during his 2014 interview — “What’s it like for this to be the last time you ever talk to a president?” — Mrs. Clinton appeared mostly deadpan, letting her host do most of the comedic legwork....

At one point, she was actually asked a policy question. But while she was explaining her hopes for improving the economy, she was interrupted by a Trump ad. Mrs. Clinton played along: “Why would you play a commercial from my opponent in the middle of our interview?”

“He paid me in steaks,” he replied, adding a scatological joke. (This is the one that got a loud laugh out of Mrs. Clinton.)

Wait! The "scatological joke" — at 5:13 — is "It's a good cut of meat. I think it's part of the asshole." And Clinton doesn't laugh at all.  She keeps a flat, glum face. How do you get "loud laugh" out of that? I'd remembered that the joke was about "the asshole," so I was curious to see Mrs. Clinton bust a gut over "asshole." Why did the NYT get that wrong — in an article that highlights that Clinton was "deadpan"? She was just as "deadpan" over "asshole" as she was about everything else.

Fan reaction to the news that Hillary Clinton will appear on the same Ellen DeGeneres episode as the actresses from the new "Ghostbusters."

@TheEllenShow @HillaryClinton @Ghostbusters pic.twitter.com/mqKpaqTwcf

— Jayson Evans (@JaysonEvans1971) May 17, 2016

I found that via the NYT, which reports that Sony Pictures is unhappy that Hillary is horning in on their long-scheduled publicity for a movie that it really needs men not to hate:

“Get your Woman Cards ready,” Ms. DeGeneres wrote on Twitter to her 60 million followers, a reference to the Republican contender Donald J. Trump’s criticism that Mrs. Clinton had relied on playing “the woman’s card.” The show’s website added, “This Wednesday, Ellen’s sitting down with some powerful women!”

But Sony's "marketing team has been fighting to tamp down what it sees as a misogynistic, Internet-based assault on the movie."

In the best of circumstances, film studios are reluctant to let a big-budget film — “Ghostbusters” cost more than $150 million to make — become identified with a political candidate. Mr. Trump, who must overcome major weaknesses among female voters, has also shown a willingness to fuel the unwanted “Ghostbusters” gender debate:

A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Jan 28, 2015 at 9:28am PST

I don't think too many men watch Ellen DeGeneres, so what's the real problem for Sony? The NYT is trying to weave this into the usual gender politics, but I think the real problem for Sony is that it wants to sell the movie to women — that's the point of going on Ellen DeGeneres — and putting Hillary on the same show saps the fun out of something that absolutely needs to be very, very fun.

Anyway, for Donald Trump, this looks like more evidence that everything ends up working for him. I hadn't seen that Instagram before. It's from last January, and now it's getting a boost. Some people may argue that it's sexist, but he's only asking a question: "What’s going on?" He has a way of stirring up your thoughts, not exactly telling you what to think, but making your mind feel activated. The thoughts that result feel like your own.

That image at the top of this post casts Trump as the villain and Hillary as the hero, but damned if he doesn't come out ahead again. She of the eternal pantsuit has been reenvisioned in the worst pantsuit ever — a beige jumpsuit. And he's looking cute as a little green monster — with the Ellen show logo looking like a halo. So unfair! But everything bounces to his favor, it seems. How does he do that?

Headline at The Daily Beast: "Hillary-Hating Fan Fiction Feeds Trump."

Subtitle: "Donald Trump has hinted he has a lot of dirt on Hillary Clinton. But where is he getting his information from? Some of the best, worst Hillary fan fiction money can buy."

The article isn't really about Trump at all — or the actual genre called fan fiction — just a collection of junk from books that say mean things about Hillary and don't seem too well-sourced.

I started reading thinking these books really were fiction using Hillary as a central character... which wouldn't be properly termed "fan faction" either, though, since Hillary is not a fictional character, though you could write a work of fiction in which it turns out that Hillary Clinton is a fictional character.

Lena Dunham denies that she walked "like a zombie towards the nearest vagina" in deciding to campaign for Hillary Clinton.

"Nothing gets me angrier than when someone implies I’m voting for Hillary Clinton simply because she’s female... as if I have some feminist version of beer-goggles, lets call it ‘estrogen blindness,’ and I just kind of walk like a zombie towards the nearest vagina. This assumption is condescending at best and it is sharply misogynistic at worst."

I agree that it's irksome to know that people think you're for Hillary just because you're a woman. I read people saying that about me often, and I'm not even for Hillary!

But... could you please not say "vagina" in the context of talking about why people are attracted to women candidates? I know it gets a laugh, but it doesn't help your candidate and it doesn't help the cause of women in politics to reduce women to a body part. It might work in a stand-up comic act, but Dunham seems to be appearing at official Hillary Clinton campaign events:

The campaign... promoted a chance for Iowa supporters to meet Dunham, raffling off a lunch date to supporters who signed up for the campaign’s text updates.... On Friday, Dunham traveled around New Hampshire with the World Cup-winning soccer superstar Abby Wambach, pitching Clinton as the best advocate for women and the best candidate for the White House.... The trips seemed aimed at young women, a seemingly natural fit for Clinton’s message....

You wouldn't talk about male genitalia that way. You wouldn't casually drop a line about Trump — as if I just kind of walk like a zombie toward the biggest phallus — and think it was cute. I mean, it kind of works as a way to talk about the lizard-brain level of electoral politics. Jeez, maybe we should talk about it.

Oh, lord, now I'm having a flashback to "Let's take a closer look at Bill's carrot and Hillary's onion ring."

The artist Sarah Sole calls her artistic take on Hillary Clinton "libidinal," distinguishing it from "all of the man-love for Obama" — such as Shepard Fairey's HOPE poster.

Rolling Stone explains.

People like Fairey "would project the most sublime, personable, personal aspirations [onto Obama]. He was pure, he was wonderful, and so of course they're going to be disappointed," Sole says. "I don't do that with Hillary. I like Hillary's impurities."...

Sole explains that the painting, "Red Gun," is a play on a photograph of Natalie Wood that ran in Life magazine in the Fifties. "The gun is the phallic power, it's sexual, but it's not eroticizing violence — it's eroticizing the idea of women with power, phallic power," she says.

To Sole, it's sexy. The sexiness of Hillary Clinton was what drew her in. "I just like her swagger. She's got something very butch about her that I like. Part of the delight of Hillary was that I was attracted to her, physically," she says. "And it was fun playing with that, even if I didn't paint well enough to make her into a beautiful woman."

You can see some of the paintings at the link and lots more of them here. You might like them, even if you're laughing at (or with) her "I didn't paint well enough to make her into a beautiful woman."

Here's what I think is the source material alongside "Red Gun":



I like this idea of taking a photograph of one person and redoing it with another person. There's commentary in the difference between the two.

What did the artist mean by "I didn't paint well enough to make her into a beautiful woman"?

HC is beautiful and I didn't do her justice.

To me, HC has an aura of beauty that I can't figure out how to depict visually.

Only a genius could turn that subject matter into a beautiful woman.

I'm also an artist of the verbal realm, intriguing you with all those variations of meaning.

pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: I think Sole is trying to do something like what Drew Friedman has done so brilliantly. Look at "Warts and All" (and the other Friedman books you'll see at that link). He worked from photographs of celebrities and he sure didn't try to make them beautiful. He leaned into surreal ugliness. Friedman's work appeared in Spy Magazine from 1986 to 1992. When I thought about that I had an a-ha moment: