You know, when you've made your mark in writing, as a columnist, you need to get some serious, unbiased advice about whether your material transfers well to audio and video. Jennifer Rubin is behaving on camera in such a ridiculously stilted, fakely enthusiastic manner that I have to assume she had no honest, competent adviser to help her build a social media brand.
And who's the guy? He seems like a character played by Phil Hartman on SNL years ago. He tells us he's Norm Eisen, and I look him up in Wikipedia and see he's "an American attorney, author, and former diplomat.... He was co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment and trial of President Donald Trump in 2020." He wrote a book called "Overcoming Trumpery: How to Restore Ethics, the Rule of Law, and Democracy." Why's he coming at us like a parody of a 1970s game-show host? Oh! Wait! This is fascinating:
"... and evolved to become a sort of wearable yearbook for college and high school seniors in the state.
The students would use corduroy clothes — typically pants and skirts in cream or yellow — as canvases that were illustrated with favorite activities, sweethearts’ initials and other personal details. The practice continued for decades before it started to die out in the 1970s.
In 2018, about two years after Ms. Bode Aujla started her ready-to-wear brand Bode, which includes pieces made with antique materials and historical techniques like quilting, she started selling custom senior cords in an attempt to revive the tradition...."
"Last fall, the actor Jeff Goldblum appeared on the 'Today' show in a Bode senior cord suit that featured illustrations of a Pittsburgh Steelers pennant, pancakes and a 'Jurassic Park' logo. Earlier this year, Indiana University bought a senior cord jacket from the brand, and Bode sent along matching pants as well.... After [a] Vogue issue with [Harry] Styles, Ms. Bode Aujla said, her brand got requests to make other pieces with similar illustrations. But Bode avoids replicating drawings. Each piece, Ms. Bode Aujla said, 'is someone’s personal cord.'"
That guy in the Post objected to the use of Jim Carrey as Joe Biden combined with Jeff Goldblum — characterized it as "this strange, aspiring 1980s East Village performance art piece." I'll just guess he doesn't know the movie "The Fly." How can you have missed "The Fly"? And I mean the Jeff Goldblum "Fly." Nothing against the Vincent Price "Fly." That's also great. But come on, if you're going to review American satire, there's a certain baseline of experience you need to have in your brain.
Kudos to "SNL"! Every one of the actors did a fine job and the material was even politically balanced. The only thing I'd change is the color of Kate MacKinnon's lipstick. She played the moderator Susan Page in pretty bright red lipstick, but Susan Page had on a color that made me laugh:
Just a little missed opportunity. They perked Susan Page up a bit. And Kate MacKinnon is already way perked up compared to the hilariously dull Susan Page. Anyway... other than that — excellent. Thanks, "SNL"!
ADDED: Here's the very best thing in "The Fly" — the part about "insect politics" (and by they way, Kate MacKinnon would make a great Geena Davis, if the Geena Davis part had found its way into the sketch):
"Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects... don't have politics. They're very... brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can't trust the insect. I'd like to become the first... insect politician. You see, I'd like to, but... I'm afraid, uh... I'm saying... I'm saying I - I'm an insect who dreamed he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over... and the insect is awake... I'm saying... I'll hurt you if you stay."
("SNL" did not use the "insect politics" material.)
So Ivankas story about her son building a lego model of the WH model is most likely a lie. She used the same story herself about Trump Towers.https://t.co/fISo2Gy45k
It's not that big a deal to build a Lego model of the White House! They sell kits. But who would attack a mother proud of her little son's accomplishment?! And it gives her the opportunity to knock you right down with a photograph:
I'm normally censorious about grown men in shorts, but I'm going to give Jeff Goldblum a pass, because he found his own way and, also, because to me, he will always be Brundlefly:
Apparently this has something to do with "Sonic" (a new movie based on the old video game about a blue hedgehog), but it's not as though Goldblum is in it. Here's the trailer that just came out 2 days ago and has been viewed on YouTube almost 33 million times:
I'm not keeping up with present-day taste in movies. I'm just amused by Jeff Goldblum. And have you ever heard of hedgehog politics? Neither have I. Hedgehogs don't have politics. They're very... brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can't trust the hedgehog.
I'm the person who once said, "Why aren't the Democratic candidates better? I'm just going to be for Amy Klobuchar," so I guess I have to read this, even though I expect it to be boring. (I've often said I like elected officials to be boring, but that doesn't mean I want to consume their boring words, and I'm also wary that a boring candidate will not make it to the position of elected official.)
Let me put the quote in context. Unboringly enough, the context is Insect Inferno.
Klobuchar was asked how she (in getting reelected Senator) was able to speak to Trump voters. She says "you have to show up," and she visits all 87 counties in Minnesota every year:
One time I found myself in a business called Insect Inferno because we had run out of places to visit. It was near the Canadian border, a Trump county, and I was in this truck, and it said, on the outside of it, “Insect Inferno: we kill bedbugs with heat,” and the whole concept was they would drive around and you put mattresses in them and then they’d put the temperature up to three hundred degrees. So when I was in there they put it up to only a hundred. But, again, I thought to myself, You go not just where it’s comfortable but where it’s uncomfortable. And to me that means being there....
Insect Inferno?! Have you ever heard of insect politics?
Later in the interview (after some grilling — mild grilling — about the Kavanaugh hearings), Klobuchar is asked , "On a scale of one to ten, where are you in terms of running for 2020?" Her answer:
Well, as I have said before, I am considering it, but I never rate, scale things. So I’m not going there, but I have been talking to people in my state and people around the country about it. I think that there are a lot of good people considering this, but I do think you want voices from the Midwest....
The interviewer (Susan B. Glasser) observes that the 2016 election was determined by the voters of the Midwest, and Klobuchar — quite unboringly — comes out with an anecdote and a metaphor:
But I do think, on the Midwestern front, my husband is the third of six kids, and his mom, they grew up in a trailer home and... they would go out on vacation. And oftentimes when they came out of the gas station she would have them each count off to make sure they were all in the car, because my husband was always the sweet, quiet one, and she was afraid he would be left at the gas station. And the Midwest was left at the gas station, and we’re not going to let that happen again. And I think that is more than a metaphor just for the Midwest. It was a lot of middle-class voters, it was a lot of citizens that felt that they weren’t getting a fair shake in the system, that they were, like, having to ration their insulin, like a kid that died, a Minnesota restaurant manager recently was doing, they weren’t feeling like they were treated right. And I think our party and whoever is our nominee has to be able to respond to those people in a way that we weren’t doing in that last election.
In schools in New York City and in pockets around the country, the use of inward-looking practices like mindfulness and meditation is starting to grow. Though evidence is thin on how well they might work in the classroom, proponents say they can help students focus and cope with stress....
“It used to be that you wouldn’t say ‘meditation’ in polite company,” said Bob Roth, executive director of the David Lynch Foundation, a charitable foundation founded by the director of “Blue Velvet,” that promotes and teaches transcendental meditation to adults and children, including those at Brooklyn Urban Garden. “Now we’re working with all the large banks, we’re working with hedge funds, we’re working with media companies. People are having us come in as part of their wellness programs, and that wasn’t the case even two years ago.”
It's the religion corporations love! Remove the pesky "God" character, and you're good to go.
“We’re putting it in a lot of our schools,” Ms. Fariña said about mindfulness, on the first day of school, “because kids are under a lot of stress.”...
Last year, [Public School 212 in Jackson Heights, Queens] converted a large closet in a subbasement into a room devoted to mindfulness, complete with dim illumination and a string of rainbow Christmas-tree lights, allowing users to switch off the harsh fluorescent light overhead.
Oh! We're still saying "Christmas"? I guess it's good for balance when the religion you're practicing in public school is not Christian.
IN THE COMMENTS: About that Bob Roth quote — "It used to be that you wouldn’t say ‘meditation’ in polite company" — Terry says: "When was that? Just another bit of liberal fantasy." And I say: "After the Beatles had their bout with the Maharishi, being into TM marked you as a bit of a flake." That's why we all got the joke in "Annie Hall" in 1977, when Jeff Goldblum (unknown at the time) made that phone call:
These people are so not lazy. They're style icons, projecting power. The same clothes every day projects industriousness, efficiency, and — if you pick the right stuff — style.
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