"Some historians who follow the presidency say Biden has always shown flashes of anger when he feels underestimated."

"While they are far more fleeting than Trump’s brandishing of grievances, they have at times been unmistakable. 'There has always been this issue of resentment with Biden. He resented [former president Barack] Obama and crew for supplanting him in 2008 and for telling him not to run in [2016], and he has many other resentments,' said Tevi Troy, a presidential historian who recently published a book on the relationship between presidents and CEOs. 'But can you imagine how resentful he is of the shifting narratives and the way he’s been pushed aside and manipulated and not treated fairly. So yeah, I can see him being resentful.'"

From "Biden touts his legacy, but frustration seeps through/The president is observing the traditions of a peaceful transfer of power, but his regrets and misgivings are evident" (WaPo)(free-access link).

Lots to talk about there, but I want to focus on "brandishing" — Trump’s brandishing of grievances. This is an article about Biden, his resentfulness, but Trump must be inserted, and he must be worse. Biden has  fleeting flashes of well-founded anger, but Trump has grievances, and he brandishes them. So Biden briefly displays resentment but Trump waves his resentment around like a weapon. 

Just yesterday, I was talking about the journalistic deployment of the word "brandish." Discussing a NYT article — "In Display of Fealty, Tech Industry Curries Favor With Trump/It was a week of frenzied activity as Silicon Valley billionaires and their companies brandished checks and compliments for President-elect Trump"  — I wrote:

"I have never met a nonbinary person who thinks that they/them pronouns are somehow exclusive to nonbinary or trans people."

"They are a way to opt out of the gender binary in third-person reference, and people may choose to do that for many reasons—gender-based, political, philosophical, even religious. One uses the pronouns someone requests because it is the courteous thing to do. It does not stop being the courteous thing to do because one disagrees with the person's reason for requesting them (at least so long as the request is made in good faith rather than as political trolling)."

Says a commenter to the NYT Ethicist column, "My Relative Isn’t Trans or Nonbinary But Wants to Use ‘They/Them’ Pronouns. The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on allyship and forms of solidarity" (NYT).

The Ethicist, Kwame Anthony Appiah, took a different position: "Using pronouns properly is a matter of not misgendering people. It isn’t part of a general policy of calling people whatever they want to be called.... [Y]our relative evidently identifies as cisgender and is motivated simply by allyship.... As the N.A.A.C.P. activist Rachel Dolezal notoriously failed to grasp, solidarity with a group does not grant you membership within it. Many will find the notion that you support people by appropriating their markers of identity to be passing strange."

"Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, last week dropped most of the 46 cases against pro-Palestinian demonstrators charged..."

"... in the April 30 siege of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University because prosecutors had little proof that the cases would stand up at trial. There was limited video footage of what took place inside the campus building.... The protesters wore masks and covered security cameras, preventing prosecutors from identifying those who had barricaded the doors and smashed chairs, desks and windows during the 17-hour occupation.... For similar reasons, prosecutors also dismissed charges against nine of the 22 students and staff members at City College who were arrested inside a campus building and charged with burglary during a protest that took place on the same night as the arrests at Hamilton Hall."

The NYT reports.

"Representative Jerrold Nadler, also a Democrat and the longest-serving Jewish member of the House of Representatives, said he had 'the uttermost faith in D.A. Bragg.'"

AND: What deep emotions stirred within Nadler that caused him to... utter... the strange word "uttermost"? My instinct was to regard it as not a word at all, but a whiffed attempt at "utmost." But I looked it up, and it's a word. The OED has it used by Hobbes ("From the uttermost parts of the Earth") and Milton ("To the uttermost convex Of this great Round") and Shelley ("From the corners uttermost Of the bounds of English coast") and Wordsworth ("A voice of uttermost joy") and Ruskin ("To speak with uttermost truth of expression") and Carlyle ("His accounts lie all ready, correct in black-on-white to the uttermost farthing"). Yes, I can answer my question "What deep emotions...?" The answer: the urge to bullshit.

"I think we need to rip off the Band-Aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy.... Nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy."

That's Matt Gaetz.

I'm reading "Gaetz Says He Will Move to Oust McCarthy for Working With Democrats/A day after the Republican speaker turned to Democrats for help passing a stopgap spending bill to avert a shutdown, the far-right congressman promised to try to remove him from his post" (NYT)

In an interview that aired on CNN on Sunday, Mr. Gaetz, Mr. McCarthy’s main tormentor, said he would do just that. By bringing up a measure called a “motion to vacate,” he can call a snap vote on whether to keep Mr. McCarthy in his post.

I like the phrase "main tormentor." Seems like the writer wanted to say "arch nemesis" and knew she needed to tone it down for NYT standards. 

It's just a "paid partnership" on Instagram. If it's not for you, it's not for you.

I'm yawning at the "uproar," noted by the stalwart New York Post, in "Nike faces online uproar over paid partnership with trans TikToker Dylan Mulvaney."

Overheard at Meadhouse:

"I've never called anything 'stalwart' before. I just felt for some reason that I needed to call The New York Post 'stalwart.'"

"I think you probably heard it called that before."

"So I'm being conventional?"

"It's just somewhere in the back of your memory, that you associate the word with The New York Post."

"Stalwart" means "Resolute, unbending, determined" as in " The duke made his stalwart declaration in the House of Lords against all parliamentary reform" (OED). 

And an "uproar" is a "Loud outcry or vociferation; noise of shouting or tumult" (OED). Some classy examples:

"Evil, be thou my good."

Said Satan, in "Paradise Lost," quoted in "Bad is Good and Good is Bad" (TV Tropes).

Sometimes it isn't enough for a villain to be evil. They have to prove their evilness by eschewing all that is good and embracing all that is bad. They'll eat foods that disgust the good guys and laugh at funerals. They may also carry this over to their speech, making sure to only use negative phrases when most people would use a positive one, and correcting themselves if they "slip" ("Oh, goody! I mean, 'baddy.'")....

Compare Above Good and Evil and What Is Evil? Villains whose strong point is not logic will sometimes use both tropes to justify this. See also Bizarro Universe, Mirror Universe, Blue-and-Orange Morality, and Naughty Is Good. Not to be confused with So Bad, It's Good.

Trending words.

That's at Etymonoline (where I was just checking whether commenters, here, were doing folk etymology on the word "window").

I guess all those words were of interest because of coronavirus. A lot of people may be wondering if "pandemic" (not on the list) has something to do with "pandemonium" (#5 on the list):

1667, Pandæmonium, in "Paradise Lost" the name of the palace built in the middle of Hell, "the high capital of Satan and all his peers," and the abode of all the demons; coined by John Milton (1608-1674) from Greek pan- "all" (see pan-) + Late Latin daemonium "evil spirit," from Greek daimonion "inferior divine power," from daimōn "lesser god" (see demon).

Transferred sense "place of uproar and disorder" is from 1779; that of "wild, lawless confusion" is from 1865.

I can see why people are looking for "draconian," "hunker," and "curfew." These all seem coronavirus-related. But what's up with "subcontract"? A Google news search produces "Contracts, the law and coronavirus" (Washington Technology):

Disruption to the supply chain especially for IT products, many of the basic components of which come from China, could cause substantial backorders and long delays in meeting government delivery deadlines.... Most commercial contracts do contain a force majeure clause that excuses delay. Those same clauses, however, may or may not have the same protections as in prime contracts. Subcontracts also may not prohibit prime contractors from seeking goods and services elsewhere if a subcontractor cannot fulfill their obligations....

Force majeure! Obviously, that's what we've got.

I thought "palpate" was odd, but I see it in "Coronavirus: Virtual medical visits more prevalent as COVID-19 infections continue to spread" and now it makes perfect sense. Why do you need to see a doctor in person? When is a virtual visit enough? A doctor says to the patient, "Just want you to palpate your neck there for me... Any tenderness? Any lymph nodes?"

ADDED: I suspect that many people — especially with time on their hands and the internet at their disposal — wonder what it really means to "hunker" down? What exactly do you do when you hunker down? Are we crouching and squatting? Does it have to do with haunches... whatever haunches are...? Do I need a hunk to do it? I would like a hunk to do it... So many things to think about.

AND: Speaking of thinking about things... A "haunch" is "a buttock and thigh considered together." I'll consider a buttock and a thigh at the same time. Is it one thing or 2 things? There's a philosophical question for you. If you believe the buttock and thigh are a single thing, then "haunch" is your word. You're a haunchist. That doesn't mean you tend to see things as unified rather than distinct. It has more to do with whether you see the distinctions on a horizontal or a vertical plane.

"There are no 'male feminist' gay guys," Joe Rogan asserts — to make the point that the "male feminist" is always faking it, faking it to get women.

"It's such a weird, sneaky thing... It's greasy!... Whenever I read 'male feminist' posts... I know what you're doing: You're a greasy man!"



Joe is speaking in the extreme, stating absolutes, and that works as comic expression, whether or not the absolute version of the statement is precisely true. Of course, if you had to defend it as precisely true, you could easily win by using a "no true Scotsman" approach to what "male feminist" means.

Also, "greasy man" is an excellent insult. It's old too. I looked it up in the OED. It's "a contemptuous or abusive epithet" that's been around since the 1500s.

On April 10th, I challenged you to diagram a 153-word sentence from "Paradise Lost."

It all started with a weather report that used the word "haboob," which got me thinking about whether "haboob" is related to "hubbub." It's not. "Hubbub" comes (probably) from the ancient Irish war-cry "ub! ub! ubub!" Looking "hubbub" up in the OED, I came across a snippet from "Paradise Lost": "A universal hubbub wilde Of stunning sounds and voices all confus'd." I wanted the complete sentence and found what I thought was the whole thing, a passage 153 words long.

Today, I get an email from Clark who says, "I have been noodling your sentence from Paradise Lost. Here is my attempt." He informs me that the 153-word text in my post is not the full sentence. There's an opening clause, and it seems to have been harder to diagram the sentence without these additional 30 words. Here's the diagram Clark sent me (click and click again to enlarge and clarify):



Here's the full 183 word passage from John Milton's magnificent poem.

Trump is "really unpopular" and "deep underwater" in some states he needs for 2020.

According to Vox.

Did Vox read my attack on the word "deeply" (here, yesterday)? Well, "deep underwater" does seem to fit with the childish "really unpopular."

And the truth is, "deep" is an adverb, which is one more reason to be irritated by "deeply." The OED finds "deep," the adverb, all the way back to the year 1000. Chaucer used it — "And swore so depe to hire to be trewe." Shakespeare used it — "That Fooles should be so deepe contemplatiue." Pope used it — "A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring." Let's keep going! There's Oliver Goldsmith — " To tie him up..from playing deep." Sir Walter Scott — "An hundred dogs bayed deep and strong." Charles Lamb — "The reason..scarcely goes deep enough into the question."

And yet the OED itself calls "deep," the adverb, obsolete when qualifying an adjective (which is what is going on with "deep underwater"). There's an exception for adjectives for colors. It sounds wrong to say "She wore a deeply blue dress" and right to say "She wore a deep blue dress" (even though we might logically think that the dress was deep). "Deep" as an adverb modifying a verb isn't wrong. Would you say "We went deep into the forest" or "We went deeply into the forest"? "Deeply" has pretty much taken over, but John Milton wrote (in "Paradise Lost"):

Oh, conscience! into what abyss of fears
And horror has thou driven me; out of which
I find no way, from deep to deeper plunged!

Yes, Trump is still President, still not impeached, and still — don't we all know? — likely to win in 2020. He's gathering strength there in the abyss, deep underwater, whatever those paltry polls have to say.

Beware the ominous green haboob and shun the frumious pollen.

"Ominous green cloud towers over town as storm stirs up rare pollen haboob" — Accuweather.

Have I written about "haboob" before? Meade sent me the link because he thought I might relate "haboob" to the recently blogged "hooha." Funny words, both.

I have, in fact, blogged "haboob" before — back in 2016 when a Texan took umbrage at the use of the word by the National Weather Service.

Haboob!?! I’m a Texan. Not a foreigner from Iraq or Afghanistan. They might have haboobs but around here in the Panhandle of TEXAS, we have Dust Storms. So would you mind stating it that way. I’ll find another weather service.

The OED traces the word in English back to 1897 and includes this example from 1959:

1959 R. E. Huschke Gloss. Meteorol. 268 Haboob (many variant spellings, including habbub, habub, haboub, hubbob, hubbub), a strong wind and sandstorm or duststorm in the northern and central Sudan, especially around Khartum, where the average number is about 24 a year.

Wait a minute! Hubbub? Is the familiar English word "hubbub" based on the Sudanese sandstorm? No. "Hubbub" may be an alternate spelling of "haboob," but the familiar word "hubbub" is much older, going back to the 16th century and — according to the OED — "often referred to as an Irish outcry, and probably representing some Irish expression. Compare Gaelic ub! ub! ubub! an interj. of aversion or contempt; abu! the war-cry of the ancient Irish."

Here's a long sentence — diagram this! — from Milton's "Paradise Lost" (boldface added):

So eagerly the fiend
Ore bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,
And swims or sinks or wades, or creeps, or flyes:
At length a universal hubbub wilde
Of stunning sounds and voices all confus'd

"Since 'Drag Race' first aired in 2009, the conversation around identity and gender has shifted tremendously."

"For all the show has done to challenge its audience’s notions of masculinity and femininity, it has shied away, until the most recent season, from any serious discussion about the ways the drag community intersects the trans one. There have been trans queens on the show, but the topic is a touchy one in the drag community. For most drag artists, the point is the performance; it is not their sole identity. But for those queens who identify as trans or nonbinary, their stage persona is not necessarily a performance. The centerpiece of the show is the contestants’ transforming themselves into queens, and then, after each competition, taking off their wigs and removing synthetic breasts to reappear as men. For years, 'Drag Race' prioritized entertainment over any nuances of the culture. Much of the queens’ vernacular, body language and movements come from the drag world’s — especially white queens’ — interpretation of black femininity. I’ve always been uncomfortable with that phenomenon, despite how much I enjoy the show. In his essay '"Draguating’ to Normal,"' the academic Josh Morrison argues that by using the bodies of women, people of color and other marginalized groups, 'through an often loving, well-intentioned impersonation of them,' drag 'unintentionally does them discursive violence.'"

From "Is ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ the Most Radical Show on TV?/The reality-television competition that began nine years ago has evolved to reflect an era fixated on gender and identity — and the boundary-pushing spirit of its star." (NYT).

What, exactly, is "discursive violence"? "Discursive" means "Of or characterized by reasoned argument or thought; logical, ratiocinative. Often opposed to intuitive" (OED).

1667 Milton Paradise Lost v. 488 Whence the soule Reason receives, and reason is her being, Discursive, or Intuitive; discourse Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours.

It can also mean refer to going "from one subject to another, esp. in a rapid or irregular manner; extending over or dealing with a wide range of subjects; expansive; digressive," like:

1791 J. Boswell Life Johnson anno 1774 I. 440 Such a discursive exercise of his mind.

Or — and I suspect this is what roils the mind of "the academic" quoted in the NYT — "Relating to discourse or modes of discourse." This is a meaning that took flight in the 1960s:

1961 Philos. Rev. 70 80 The word ‘God’ looks the same in any discursive context, whether narrative, factual, or formal....

And the most recent quote is this, which I can't help but think the OED intended to laugh at:

2011 C. West in G. Rockhill & A. Gomez-Muller Politics of Culture & Spirit of Critique vi. 114 Deploying that voice in..a variety of different discursive strategies, a variety of different modes of rhetorical persuasion as well as logical argumentation in order to make some kind of impact on the world.

"A few weeks ago, in the country, far from the lights of the city, I saw the entire sky 'powdered with stars” (in Milton’s words)..."

"... such a sky, I imagined, could be seen only on high, dry plateaus like that of Atacama in Chile (where some of the world’s most powerful telescopes are). It was this celestial splendor that suddenly made me realize how little time, how little life, I had left. My sense of the heavens’ beauty, of eternity, was inseparably mixed for me with a sense of transience — and death. I told my friends Kate and Allen, 'I would like to see such a sky again when I am dying.' 'We’ll wheel you outside,' they said."

Writes Oliver Sacks, who is dying.

I almost certainly will not see my polonium (84th) birthday, nor would I want any polonium around, with its intense, murderous radioactivity. But then, at the other end of my table — my periodic table — I have a beautifully machined piece of beryllium (element 4) to remind me of my childhood, and of how long ago my soon-to-end life began.

"What are these new ways of wearing lipstick?"

"According to many makeup artists, the key is to layer, layer, layer. (First rule of lipstick: any two colors mixed together look snazzier than one alone.) And then, after all that varnishing, strategically undo what you’ve done: engage in some artful blotting. It’s this final step that renders the lips stained, not shellacked."

Blotting. In the 1950s and early 60s, lipstick application always ended with putting a tissue between your lips and pressing them together, leaving a lip-shaped lipstick mark. You'd put it on, then take some of it off. Was that an unnecessary ritual or something you needed to do because lipstick wasn't as good back then as it is today? It was dry and it looked darker on than in the tube. It got darker over the course of the day too. In the 60s, things changed as young women wore frosted, light colors, including white, and then we switched to completely clear "lip gloss." Everything else looked old. It's funny to read an elaborate article today about how to make lipstick "new" again, especially seeing something that is, to me, the epitome of old: blotting.

ADDED: "Blot" is a funny word, which can mean to add spots of staining material like ink (which leads to the figurative use when we speak of dirtying a reputation ("Theres a good mother, boy, that blots thy father!" wrote Shakespeare)). It also refers to erasing and wiping away. The OED has these very old examples:

1611   Bible (A.V.) Acts iii. 19   Repent yee therefore..that your sins may be blotted out.
1667   Milton Paradise Lost xi. 891   Not to blot out mankind.
1593   Shakespeare Venus & Adonis sig. Biiijv,   Like mistie vapors when they blot the skie.

"Smitten by his love."

"The cross of Christ invites us also to allow ourselves to be smitten by his love, teaching us always to always look upon others with mercy and tenderness," said Pope Francis, in Brazil. I don't think he was speaking English. But... smitten.

It's just the past participle of "smite," which is a strange old word that we associate with God striking someone dead. We think of it used comically, affecting an old-time locution.

"Self-esteem. This organ is situated at the vertex or top of the head..."

"... a little above the posterior or sagittal angle of the parietal bones."

In phrenology, self-esteem is: "One of the mental faculties with which an ‘organ’ or ‘bump’ in the cranium is associated; the ‘bump’ itself." That's from the (unlinkable) OED, where I was looking up "self-esteem," after blogging about Monica Lewinsky's 40th birthday and cherry-picking the old Barbara Walters prompt "Where was your self-esteem?"

Monica, had she known phrenology, might have said: Where? It's at the top of my head, of course, a little above the posterior or sagittal angle of the parietal bones.



Too bad I don't have comments or you could supply me with the jokes about Clinton's "organ" and the location of his self-esteem. I won't go there, other than to say that I see that one could. I've got lofty plans for the direction of this blog post.

At the Cabin-Fever Café...

... we finally got the snow that reopened the ski trails, but it's 4.6 °F — "Feels Like -11 °F" — here in Madison, and that's beyond the point where you can say to yourself be tough, be strong. Not for mere recreation or the general principle of getting out of the house.

Within this shut-in-ism, let me offer another exam in my capacity as Freewheeling Lawprof of the Internet. Open the door to the exam room carefully....

The last exam was in media bias, and some excellent answers were turned in there. This is a difficult assignment for a class in Creative Misinterpretation. You've got to get up to speed with the "Gatsby" project sentences. I think there are about 30 or so of them by now. If you've been following along,  you have your favorite phrases — "leaking isolated and unpunctual tears," "contiguous to absolutely nothing," "a puddle of water glaring tragically," "I suppose it is the latest thing to sit back and...," "stirred the gray haze," "warm human magic,""mashed potatoes and coffee," "hot whips of panic," "the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling," "shadows... rouged and powdered,"  the "continually smouldering" nerves under the "spotted dress," the "crowded hams," cooking things through bewitchery, "suck on the pap of life," "tortuously, fashionably," "the real snow, our snow," nibbling "at the edge of stale ideas," "a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden," and — of course — running out of a room calling "Ewing!" and returning with "an embarrassed, slightly worn young man, with shell-rimmed glasses and scanty blond hair."

Either you've been following along or you haven't. If you haven't, you could try to catch up, or you might want to run right out of the room, in which case, just humor me by calling "Ewing!" as you go.

Now, what happened yesterday was that I toyed with the idea, suggested by Original Commenter Genius Palladian, that we should abandon "Gatsby" and switch to "Paradise Lost." I only veered into that because the "Gatsby" sentence included "rivulets," and I looked up "rivulet" in the OED and saw a quote from "Paradise Lost." I found the entire "rivulet" sentence — 18 lines! — and reprinted it in the post, and that led Upstart Commenter Genius betamax3000 to riff in a strange manner:

"The tears coursed down her cheeks — not freely, however, for when they came into contact with her heavily bedded buttocks they assumed an inky color. She went out of the room calling 'Ewing!' and returned in a few minutes accompanied by an embarrassed, slightly worn young man, with shell-rimmed glasses and scanty blond hair. Tears coursed down his cheeks, too, an indefinite procession of cheeks, that rouged and powdered on an invisible ass...."

It goes on, collecting and repurposing sentence fragments from past posts (into which we are borne back ceaselessly).  That gave me the idea for a new exam. You can decide if you want to compete at the basic or the advanced level. At the basic level, you need only combine fragments from the "Gatsby" project sentences in any way that you think might amuse us.

If you would like to compete at the advanced level, I'm a little worried. You'll have to be very tough. At this altitude, it's 4.6 °F and feels like -11 °F. You have to take the 18 lines of "Paradise Lost" and redo them using the fragments from "Gatsby" project sentences. You know, Gatsby is the snake, trying to get Daisy alone. Daisy is futzing with the drooping flour/flower stalks.  The Garden of Eden becomes the "Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden."

Time limit: You have until the temperature hits 32° in Madison. Answers may be submitted in the comments. Grades will be arbitrary or nonexistent or the incomparable milk of wonder.

"The tears coursed down her cheeks — not freely, however..."

"... for when they came into contact with her heavily beaded eyelashes they assumed an inky color, and pursued the rest of their way in slow black rivulets."

That's the sentence from "The Great Gatsby" today, in the "Gatsby" project.

Tears coursed. The subject and the predicate are right up there at the outset. No teasing about where the foundation of this sentence is. Course is a strange verb for ran. There are reasons to choose the odder word. Course, for example, is more woody, less tinny than ran. The tears coursed, but not freely, because they got stuck on the woman's mascaraed eyelashes. It's thickly applied black mascara. We know it's thickly applied, because it's the excess blobs of mascara that give the impression of beads, and inky means black. So the tears got stuck on the blobs and became a coagulated black liquid, slowed down, but still, on each cheek, a little river, a rivulet.

Post-Christmas.

I hope you got what you wanted for Christmas. Do you like the day after Christmas? You can play with your presents and do whatever you want. Or do you focus more on the tasks of cleaning up, exchanging the bad gifts, and thinking that you have to go a whole year before there is another Christmas?

The day after Christmas.
	Nice!
	Bah!
pollcode.com free polls

By the way, did you know that Wikipedia has an entry for "Is the glass half empty or half full?"?

It's a charming example of that the utterly flat, doggedly factual Wikipediprose:

Is the glass half empty or half full? is a common expression, used rhetorically to indicate that a particular situation could be a cause for optimism (half full) or pessimism (half empty); or as a general litmus test to simply determine if an individual is an optimist or a pessimist. The purpose of the question is to demonstrate that the situation may be seen in different ways depending on one's point of view and that there may be opportunity in the situation as well as trouble.

This idiom is used to explain how people perceive on events and objects. Perception is unique to every individual and is simply an interpretation of reality.

There are 8 links in that passage, which, in a concession to the shortness of life, I am not going to insert.

There's also a photograph of a half-full glass -- oh! I gave myself away! -- and then this, which I love:

See also

• Silver lining

"Silver lining," it turns out, has a much richer history than the old 4 ounces of water in an 8 ounce glass, going back to 1634: "Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud/Turn forth her silver lining on the night."