My commenters jumped when I quoted the word "Caucasity," but my question is whether the proper spelling isn't "Caucacity."

Here's the context of my quotation. NY Magazine writer Choire Sicha wrote "For obvious reasons (Caucasity), most of these reporters are on the joyless, scold-y White Twitter...."

In the comments, Lucien said: "'Caucasity'? Is that like 'whiteness'?"  And Clyde said: "'Caucasity'?! What bilge!" 

To answer Lucien's question, "Caucasity" clearly means "whiteness." Why use an odd word when there's a more common word? I'd say it's just for humorous effect. It actually takes race less seriously. "Caucasian" used to have a somewhat elevated quality, when race was palmed off as a biological science. To seize upon the big word and to further enlarge it with an ending is a standard humor move. It's actually quite old fashioned.

But I just want to question the choice of ending — "-sity," rather than "-city." I've googled Caucasity" and got thrown into the Urban Dictionary entry "Caucacity" — with the "c," not the "s":

"Now Ann has baited me into promiscuously spiking my anxiety stew with carnalized onions..."

Ha ha ha. My favorite kind of comment — taking an ingredient from an old post and adding it to the material in the post under discussion. It's fusion commenting, like fusion cooking... and the metaphor in the comment is cooking.

And I love that I've got a tag for "onions," though I see various posts with onions that did not get the tag, including posts with the tag "onion rings," onion rings being a special, niche topic here on the blog. Remember these carnalized onion rings? And of course, these ("I doubt if any blogger will disagree with my assertion that, coming from Bill Clinton, the 'O' of an onion ring is a vagina symbol").

Speaking of comments, I can see some of you are saying I'm not giving you the kind of post you like anymore. There are at least 4 reasons for that:

1. The world is locked down, so things don't just happen anymore, not the kind of things that delight and intrigue. The usual places still have their articles, but they're filling space. They're doing what they have to do, and I can smell the fakeness, the ennui. I have my standard, and I'll read until something crosses the line for me. 

2. The standard on this blog is not big over small. I'm not here to repeat headlines about what the President just did. In fact, if the headline is big, I'd rather go small.

3. I'm not interested in throwing my weight onto one side or the other, and if I have nothing to add, there's no reason to write about these things. With Trump, I have distanced myself from the relentless haters, but I'm in no mood to encourage him either. I'm waiting for the next few weeks to pass, hunkering down. I could spring out and denounce him, but I don't join mobs. 

4. It's Christmas Eve. Talk about keeping a distance. What can you see from a distance? "When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, 'What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?'"

2 views of Serena Williams.

1. The Atlantic: "Serena Williams's U.S. Open Loss Was Humiliating—But Not For Her/What happened to the superstar was shocking. It was not surprising."

Taking a game away from Williams for using the word “thief” during such a high-stakes match is unlikely to do much to quash the notion that a double standard exists between men and women in today’s competitive tennis field. And the stakes of that double standard can feel even higher for women of color....

To see Williams’s comeback after a traumatic birth stymied over seemingly minor infractions seems unnecessary and malicious. To see the devastation that those penalties wrought on two women of color at the top of their sport, during what should have been a joyous time, is heartbreaking.

During a post-game interview Williams was undeterred: “I’m here to fight for women’s rights and women’s equality,” she said....

2. New York Post: "It’s shameful what US Open did to Naomi Osaka."

Here was a young girl who pulled off one of the greatest upsets ever, who fought for every point she earned, ashamed. At the awards ceremony, Osaka covered her face with her black visor and cried. The crowd booed her. Katrina Adams, chairman and president of the USTA, opened the awards ceremony by denigrating the winner and lionizing Williams — whose ego, if anything, needs piercing....

ADDED: Another iteration of view #1. In The Cut (by Rebecca Traister): "Serena Williams and the Game That Can’t Be Won (Yet) What rage costs a woman":

Why is Taylor Swift on Time's "Silence Breakers" Person of the Year Cover? And why is Rose McGowan not?

Quite a few people are asking this question, e.g., Vox:

Swift does have grounds to appear on the cover: She was at the center of a sexual assault trial this summer that in retrospect seems like a precursor to our current post-Weinstein moment.... In 2013, Taylor Swift was groped by radio DJ David Mueller, who grabbed her butt during a meet-and-greet photo session. Swift told Mueller’s boss, who fired him following an investigation. Mueller then filed a defamation suit against Swift, saying that he never touched her and that she ruined his reputation and cost him his job. So Swift filed a countersuit, claiming assault. She sought — and won — an award of just $1, saying through her lawyer that she wanted to “serve as an example to other women who may resist publicly reliving similar outrageous and humiliating acts."...

Swift’s appearance also raises the specter of those not included on the Time cover who were arguably more central to the #MeToo moment. Rose McGowan, who led the charge against Harvey Weinstein and his associates, is relegated to the interior....

It might have something to do with who was willing to sit for the portrait Time wanted for the cover. Maybe McGowan didn't want to be in that group or didn't like the words Time wanted to use or the strange aesthetics of the cover — with the women all draped in black and looking grim.

Notice that the names of the women do not appear on the cover, and I'm sure that caused many people (including me) to say I know that one's Taylor Swift but who are these other women?

I can see why Time was eager to include the very famous Taylor Swift on the cover. Swift was in the running for Person of the Year in her own right as an individual, and she did very well on Time's poll to find out who readers wanted to see.

I can think of all kinds of things that may have caused McGowan to decline to participate. Maybe she's just angry that the silence-breaking has taken so long. Why didn't Time Magazine apply its journalistic resources to breaking the silence itself long ago? Now that others have done the work, Time wants to reap rewards from doing its traditional end-of-the-year cover. I can see resisting that.

But let's see what Rose McGowan herself may be saying. Ah!

Ronan Farrow. Investigator of the Year. Writer of the Year. #MyTime

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) December 7, 2017

She thought Ronan Farrow deserved it. That's something many of you were saying in the comments to yesterday's post about the Person of the Year: