"Plenty of Jews Love Zohran Mamdani."

The headline for a Michelle Goldberg column. Excerpt:

“His campaign has attracted Jewish New Yorkers of all types,” wrote Jay Michaelson, a columnist at the Jewish newspaper The Forward. The rabbi who runs my son’s Hebrew school put Mamdani on his ballot, though he didn’t rank him first. And while Mamdani undoubtedly did best among left-leaning and largely secular Jews, he made a point of reaching out to others....

So it has been maddening to see people claim that Mamdani’s win was a victory for antisemitism.... Ultimately.... New York’s Democratic primary wasn’t about Israel.... 

The attacks on Mamdani during the primary were brutal, but now that he’s a national figure, those coming his way will be worse. His foes will try to leverage Jewish anxieties to smash the Democratic coalition.... But don’t forget that the vision of this city at the heart of Mamdani’s campaign — a city that embraces immigrants and hates autocrats, that’s at once earthy and cosmopolitan — is one that many Jews, myself included, find inspiring....

Earthy.  

I was moved to unearth every "earthy" in the 21-year archive of this blog. They're all quotes of other people. I've never once used the word (except for one instance, now corrected, where I clearly meant to type "earthly" ("I didn't think you would be terribly sad to see that Robert Blake has left the earthy scene")).

"If I were advising the candidates, I’d tell them to double down on weirdness."

Says David Brooks, on September 8, 2008.

Blogging that at the time, here, I said that Brooks observed that "Obama started out weird and did well, then got conventional and did less well, especially with McCain getting weird. 'Weirdness wins,' [Brooks] says."

I thought you might like to see that today, when so many people are saying "weird" at the same time and as if it's a bad thing.

Let me give you a bit more of Brooks:

"It is... easy to forget that Chris Rock preceded Donald Trump in deriding John McCain for having been captured..."

"... during a 2008 performance in defense of Obama: 'There’s a lot of guys in jail that got captured. I don’t wanna vote for nobody that got captured—I wanna vote for the motherfucker who got away!'... What separates Chris Rock from Donald Trump is that Rock knows the liminal space he’s in, poised between actual revelation and wicked hyperbole—a truth to which we are clued in as much by his performance style (his constant nervous pacing, his sidelong glances) as by his words. The impieties are to be taken as possibilities, not as actual truths. It may be that Trump intuitively understands this, too, and that one reason his sneers and terrifying invocation of cruelty are not taken as seriously as they should be is that some people think of Trump’s discourse as that of the insult comedian: He doesn’t really mean it. He does...."

Writes Adam Gopnik, in "What Do We Want from Comedy?/We insist that comedians respect our sacrosanct ideals—and pray that they skewer our sanctimony. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it" (The New Yorker).

Do you know what "liminal space" that sentence about liminal space is in? "What separates Chris Rock from Donald Trump" — I'd say — is that we are all equally "clued in" to what Chris Rock is doing — because he's plainly and clearly a comedian — and we are differently clued in about Donald Trump. Some of us feel that we get him, and we can deal with the mix of humor and seriousness. It's even quite brilliant. Others hear the odd things as crazy and threatening, and they can't relax and enjoy it. And taking Trump's words seriously makes them useful to his antagonists. He said he'd be a dictator on Day 1! 

In Great Britain, they say "coffin" and regard a 6-hour car "journey" as something that would challenge anyone's resolve.

10:23am, the Queen’s coffin passes through her local village of Ballater.
Our colleague @PeterAdamSmith was told yesterday: “The country has lost a Monarch, we have lost a neighbour”.#QueenElizabeth pic.twitter.com/Bh4mU1Js1c

— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) September 11, 2022

All the British news reports I'm seeing about moving the Queen's body from Scotland to London are using the word "coffin."

I think it's a word we Americans tend to use when talking about horror movies or Halloween or old cemeteries.

It is also used in America to generate outrage about the stark reality of death. Let me give 2 examples from the NYT:

1. From 2004: "The Bush administration's policy of barring news photographs of the flag-covered coffins of service members killed in Iraq won the backing of the Republican-controlled Senate on Monday, when lawmakers defeated a Democratic measure to instruct the Pentagon to allow pictures."

2. From 2018: "As Senator John McCain’s coffin was being loaded onto a military plane bound for Washington on Thursday afternoon, cameras from major American TV networks beamed the coverage around the world, allowing a rapt public to witness the next leg of his four-day funeral. Back at the White House, President Trump aggressively tried to wrestle back the attention. 'Throwback Thursday!' the president exclaimed on Twitter, posting a video of celebratory Fox News clips of his unlikely route to the presidency just as Mr. McCain’s coffin was heading for Washington, where it will lie in state in the United States Capitol on Friday." (Remember when we were "rapt" at the transportation of a dead Senator's body and the President was a lout not to devote himself 100% to national mourning?)

If you attempt to research the American preference for the word "casket," you'll be swamped with funeral-industry doctrine restricting "coffin" to containers that are wider at the shoulders and narrower at the feet. ‚ so "coffins" really are those horror movie/Halloween props and what we picture buried in very old cemeteries. The modern rectangular box, we're told, is called a "casket." This is a denial that "casket" is a euphemism for "coffin."

In America, at least. In the U.K., it seems, "coffin" is the most reverent and respectful word — expressive of rectitude and rectangularity. 

"Immediately following the story’s publication, John and Cindy McCain both lied to the American people."

Wrote Steve Schmidt, quoted in "Former Top McCain Aide Says He Lied to Discredit a Times Article/'John McCain’s lie became mine,' Steve Schmidt wrote about Senator John McCain’s relationship with a female lobbyist" (NYT).

Defending his long silence on the matter, Mr. Schmidt said in his post that he “didn’t want to do anything to compromise John McCain’s honor.” His post then questioned Mr. McCain’s judgment in choosing the relatively unknown governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, as his running mate and accused Mr. McCain of cowering before her — “terrified of the creature that he created,” he wrote. 

In an interview on Monday, Mr. Schmidt said he was motivated to speak up now in part because he felt he had been unfairly associated for nearly 15 years with Mr. McCain’s choice of Ms. Palin, which he called “a burden.”

Speaking of honor, you should have unburdened yourself while the man you accuse of lying was still alive. Now, it looks like you just can't get enough of kicking Sarah Palin around. Go away.

"What has happened to [Kamala] Harris reminds me of another — but very different — female vice-presidential pick: former Alaska governor Sarah Palin..."

"Republican influencers handpicked Palin because.... She was striking, popular and (at least to some) was a family-values exemplar.... Uncharacteristically, McCain, after meeting with Palin for just over an hour, surrendered to the argument that she could rally the troops with a wink and a pair of red heels. Why, Republicans could even claim a feminist coup. And they were right — for about 30 minutes at the 2008 Republican National Convention. Things went downhill after that.... Several years ago, I wrote about Palin that men used her the way men have always used women — as bit players on a stage set for their success and her failure. I’m afraid Harris, who by most accounts has been sidelined by the president, is beginning to get the picture."

Writes Kathleen Parker, in "Has Kamala Harris been sidelined?" (WaPo).

There are some similarities but also some differences. Sarah Palin was immensely charismatic, a vigorous presence who drew enthusiastic crowds. She needed to be reined in. Kamala Harris has never shown a glimmer of political oomph. Yes, they are both women, and I can see that Kathleen Parker wants to defend women, but part of the defense of women is the avoidance of stereotypes, and though both of these women served the interest of a presidential candidate who wanted credit for picking a female running mate, the details of what they liked about the woman — and what they, later, did not like — are very different.

TO BE FAIR: Parker does say Palin is "very different."

Kyrsten Sinema cutely dramatized her "no" to the $15 minimum wage and some people are really mad about it.

I'm reading "Sinema Slammed For Exaggerated Thumbs-Down On $15 Minimum Wage" (HuffPo). Here's how it looked:

Did Sinema really have vote against a $15 minimum wage for 24 million people like this? pic.twitter.com/Jv0UXLKLHI

— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) March 5, 2021

We watched that about 20 times. It's hard to know why she did it like that. At first, we thought maybe she was emulating John McCain, whose dramatic down vote on the GOP health care repeal was done with a distinct hand gesture. 

But look at that — here. It's not much like what Sinema did, which was a whole body movement, bouncing down and back up as she did a sassy thumb's down. McCain held his hand out to get attention — because he was voting after the point in the roll call where his name had appeared — and when he got the attention, he briskly pointed his whole hand downward. 

McCain took the position that the left loved, and Sinema was on the side the left hates. I can't remember the worst things the right said about McCain and his dramatic moment, but the left is spewing hostility at Sinema. I'll just highlight this from Lawyers, Guns & Money: 

I get that Joe Manchin is just a narcissistic conservative asshole having the time of his life. But what the living fuck is this shit?... Of course, she’s claiming that criticism of this grotesque display is sexist...

ADDED: I think the right attitude for voting down the minimum wage is more somber. It should express something more like: I'm sorry, I want hard-working people to make more money too, but this is the wrong way to try to make that happen. The gesture Sinema gave feels more like: Ha! So there! That's not appropriate to the occasion. It makes her seem as though she doesn't even understand what she's doing.

So... humor has not died. I question whether it's "too funny." But who cares? At least we're not too uptight to make jokes... or at least only if they are anti-Trump...

In light of tonight’s news....

*sorry I had to, the meme is too funny. pic.twitter.com/lo6xHqCbk0

— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) November 13, 2020