Lawrence O'Donnell does an excellent professional job of clearly and concisely presenting what happened to Michael Cohen yesterday.

TikTok so it's after the jump:

Lawrence O'Donnell learns the word "beclown."

Have you ever used the word beclown? I haven’t. Thank you @JRubinBlogger for this perfect word. https://t.co/Hg4kPshIbv

— Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) October 21, 2019

I guess Lawrence O'Donnell hasn't been reading Instapundit over the years, because "beclown" is a favorite word over there. Here are all the "beclown"s on Instapundit, the oldest one being this, from 2007:

I LOVE THIS PHRASE: “BECLOWNED HIMSELF.” It fits.

He loved it, and he remembered to use it. We'll see if O'Donnell, newly infatuated with "beclown," remembers it.

I checked my archive, and I see I've never used "beclown," never even quoted it. But the second place I check is the OED, and it is there, under the entry for the prefix "be-." And the quote is from 1609:

1609 S. Rowlands Whole Crew Kind Gossips 24 O wretch, O Lob, who would be thus beclown'd?

There are lots of "be-" words attested to by the OED — "bedoctor," "befinger," "berascal," "bebutter," "becobweb," "bepimple" (to choose a tiny handful).

Here's something Laurence Sterne wrote in "Tristram Shandy" (1769): "[T]he souls of connoisseurs... by long friction and incumbition, have the happiness, at length, to get all be-virtu'd—be-pictured,—be-butterflied, and be-fiddled."

I am amused (not bemused (which means puzzled)).

Political theater.

I've been in a lot of presidential meetings in that room and I never saw anyone literally stand up to a president like that because no one ever had to.

Only Trump would tweet this perfect picture of his weakness & humiliation. @SpeakerPelosi finest moment. https://t.co/wca1oSqytY

— Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) October 16, 2019

Nancy Pelosi needs help fast! There is either something wrong with her “upstairs,” or she just plain doesn’t like our great Country. She had a total meltdown in the White House today. It was very sad to watch. Pray for her, she is a very sick person!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2019

"So, striking a deal with the Democrats on the budget, President Trump — and the Democrats Pelosi and Schumer — opened up another chance for Republicans to repeal Obamacare."

On the NYT "Daily" podcast today — scroll to 3:15 — Michael Barbaro asks how it happened that Congress is once again returning to the effort to repeal of Obamacare. "It just seemed so over" after the last defeat. Thomas Kaplan (who covers Congress for the NYT) answers:

It looked like September was going to be a nightmare of a month because Congress needed to pass a spending measure to keep the government open, and they also needed to raise the debt limit, and that look like it was going to be this big, messy fight. To everyone's surprise...

The podcast shifts to audio of news reports of Trump's meeting with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and his breaking with the GOP and siding with Democrats to get a deal on these big messy things that were going to be the nightmare of September.

Kaplan continues:

And that was a tough pill to swallow for Republicans, who were completely blindsided, but it sort of cleared the decks for the rest of September. Instead of having this big fiscal fight, that was resolved much earlier than everyone thought it would be.

For podcast listeners who may be only slowly waking up and blearily starting their day with the NYT podcast, Barbaro hammers* the point:

So, striking a deal with the Democrats on the budget, President Trump — and the Democrats Pelosi and Schumer — opened up another chance for Republicans to repeal Obamacare. That's striking.

Kaplan:

Yeah. No. Completely.

Is Trump that crafty? Did Schumer and Pelosi fall into a trap? I'm inclined to answer those questions yes if only because the 2 NYT reporters — who I doubt would give Trump any extra credit — made me think about it that way. And yet, I don't believe the new legislative effort will succeed. But if it does....
_______________

* I use the word "hammers": 1. because of the repetitious pounding of the the same idea, 2. because Barbaro uses the word "striking" twice, and 3. because... STOP THE HAMMERING...

"Stop the hammering"/"We'll do it live."

Well, I mashed up Lawrence O'Donnell and Bill O'Reilly because it just had to be done https://t.co/9LLxb1sOIy pic.twitter.com/eSpox7gbhI

— David Rutz (@DavidRutz) September 20, 2017

"Female journalists... can get away with explicitly sexist attacks on their male colleagues."

"Last August, after getting into an on-air spat about U.S.–Russian relations with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, New Republic senior editor Julia Ioffe penned an article titled 'Dear Lawrence O’Donnell, Don’t Mansplain to Me About Russia.' In January, Marjorie Ingalls, a columnist for the online Jewish magazine Tablet, derided male reviewers who were insufficiently impressed by Disney’s latest animated feature 'Frozen' as 'boys' who miss the film’s girl-power message because they are 'writing with their penises.'"

So writes Cathy Young... with her... computer...  in Reason, in a piece called "Is There a Cyber War on Women?" 

Wouldn't it be fun to use such casually absurd and unfair literary fillips when writing about women? But you'd get in trouble. The feminists would be on your case. I'd say about that: 1. Mockery of the group that's been, traditionally, subordinated feels different and is going to be disapproved of long after many or most people are ready to say we've reached the condition of equality, 2. Mockery of the traditionally up group — males, white people, etc. — acknowledges their power and doesn't feel subordinating, so it actually does seem like fun, 3. Men (and white people) can put their efforts into claiming victimhood and insisting that we respect their dignity by refraining from sexist tropes like "writing with their penises," but 4. When all the writers submit to the calls for civility and treating everyone — including the powerful — with respect and gender-and-color neutrality, we will all be less free and more bored.

There's a lot more at Cathy Young's article, including this paragraph that mentions me:

While the political blogosphere, like punditry in more traditional media venues, skews male for many complicated reasons, the female presence in the new media is strong and thriving. Currently, the top-rated blog according to Technorati is the female-headed Huffington Post and the most popular independent, one-person blog belongs to University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse. Althouse’s take on the issue of woman abuse online can be summed up as “report serious threats to the cops; otherwise, grow a tough skin.”

"MSNBC pundits said Clint Eastwood’s GOP convention speech Thursday night was a 'bizarre' and 'embarrassing' 'disaster'..."

Key word: MSNBC.

“Clint Eastwood was a disaster,” Lawrence O’Donnell said.

“I thought Clint Eastwood was bizarre,” Ed Schultz said. “It was demeaning to the presidency.”

Ha ha ha. That wasn't even a comedy routine (as Eastwood's performance was).

ADDED: I hope if anyone does any comedy at the Democratic convention that Ed Schultz will be fair and balanced enough to say it demeans the presidency. Maybe he should be a little more concerned about what demeans journalism.

AND: Here's the whole Eastwood performance. Is it really that hard to get? No, they're merely playing dumb (and humorless), even though they want the other party to be known as "the stupid party."

UPDATE: I just rewatched the performance. It was great! Hilarious... subtle... well-paced.... The haters are totally bullshitting and playing dumb (assuming they are not actually dumb). And what they are trying to do is scare other celebrities: Toe the line or we will destroy you. That crushing repression is the opposite of what the performing arts should be about.

ALSO: "Why the criticism and mockery of Clint Eastwood will backfire."

“Why does Ann Coulter call Todd Akin ‘a selfish swine?’”

Asked Lawrence O’Donnell (who, strangely, looks almost exactly like Todd Akin).

“Because Todd Akin’s bat-crap crazy ideas on rape are going to make it so much harder for [R]epublicans to win control of the Senate. Right now, Democrats hold 51 Senate seats, Republicans 47, independents 2. Republicans would need to pick up four seats to gain control of the Senate. They would need only three seats if Mitt Romney actually won the election, because then the vice president, Paul Ryan, would be able to cast a tie-breaking votes.”

But according to Coulter, O’Donnell['s] failure to invite her to appear on his show makes him “a complete pussy”....

The link goes to The Daily Caller (which badly needs proofreading — I had to fix 2 things in this short cut-and-paste). The main reason I'm linking to this item is that the picture of O'Donnell looks so much like Akin.

I looked for a picture of Akin to make my point and got distracted by — speaking of "a complete pussy" — this.

ADDED: Selfish swine or kind toad?

"Today Show Covered Benefits of MS Patients Riding Horses Same Day O'Donnell Mocked Ann Romney For It."

NBC stumbles into some bad luck as Jack Osbourne — Ozzy's son — comes out with an announcement of MS, causing some un-Romney-related coverage of the disease.