"Trainers are good for one thing only: running in the forest or perhaps on a beach."

"If you must wear them, you should wear old-fashioned tennis shoes or topsiders. Anyway, I am thrilled people will stop wearing them all the time — visually I find them clumpy and heavy.... The feet should be light and beautifully dressed, not burdened with these visually heavy trainers. Lightness and comfort have always been essential in my design process. My shoes have old-fashioned values that are not impacted by the constant moves in fashion. I can’t wait to see a new era of well-dressed men."

Said the shoemaker Manolo Blahnik, quoted in "How Instagram made brogues fashionable again/The classic leather shoe is making a comeback, aided by social media and vintage resale sites" (London Times).

Do you think these kids today are returning to non-sneaker shoes?

Do you know why the British call sneakers "trainers," and why Americans call sneakers "sneakers"? If it's that the British are more about athletic training and the Americans are more about not making noise — sneaking up on people — then why is that? Americans attempted to shift from "sneakers" to "running shoes," but that failed, didn't it? We've established our preference for sneakiness over athletics.

"And she’s such a ’60s girl! She’s still faithful to the hairstyle. It’s like Jean Shrimpton...."

Said Manolo Blahnik, the shoe designer, about Mary Beard, the great writer about books on ancient Rome. He's quoted in a NYT article titled "Mary Beard and Her ‘Battle Cry’ Against Internet Trolling," which is about her self-defense against things that have been said about the way she looks. Most of the article is about her supposed "vindication of one of the rights of woman: to look, even in her 50s, like her unvarnished self." But what jumped out at me and made it bloggable was Blahnik's praise of the way she looks — the assertion that it's good and not the dreary assertion of some "right" to look bad. 

The article has quotes from "Tina Brown, the founder of the Women in the World conference (in which The New York Times is an investor)" — oh, hell — including the denouncement of Donald Trump for his "ugly" "injection of pure derogatory comments about women." Beard expounded in a sort of scholarly tone about Trump and trolls: "You could make a powerful argument that the kind of tropes in Trump’s discourse overlap with the discourse you see in trolling: about women shutting up, about menstruation." The NYT assures us that both women — Brown and Beard — displayed a sense of humor.

“This is exactly what we need more of in American feminism: wry humor,” Ms. Brown said. “The outrage meter is getting out of control.”

“It’s about talking about it,” Ms. Beard said. “It’s not being fazed. It’s about having a laugh about it. A bit of outrage is good, but having your only rhetorical register as outrage is always going to be unsuccessful. You’ve got to vary it. Sometimes, some of the things that sexist men do just deserve to be laughed at.... Go back home to mummy,” she said. “She’ll smack your bottom.”

Yes, there is too much outrage, so perhaps I should resist expressing outrage at the idea that it's funny when a woman hits a boy, that domestic violence is only serious — and then it's utterly serious — when a man hits a woman.

Anyway, here's the iconic magazine cover of Jean Shrimpton that blew our mind in 1965:



No one is really still faithful to the hairstyle. The huge back of the head "bump" reads as lunacy now. You can't have it today and be seen as Shrimpton was seen back then. The eye has changed, but in the mind's eye — in Blahnik's mind's eye — Beard is faithful to the 60s hairstyle. You have to modify things to keep them the same.

Why did CNN cut the length of the Democratic candidates' debate from 3 hours to 2 hours?

No reason is given.

Meade speculates: "Bernie and Hillary are too old to stand for 3 hours."

Me: "We can't sit through 3 hours."

From my 36-point live-blog of the 3-hour GOP debate:

26. How long is this darned thing? I thought 2 hours. Then I thought 2 and a half. Now, I'm thinking it's going to go on for 3 hours. This is madness!...

35. After the debate, in an interview, Trump says what he learned is that he can stand for 3 hours. Yeah, that was a severe challenge — having to stand there for 3 hours. It was hard enough to sit through!

And the woman has to do the standing in heels, as HuffPo pointed out after the 3-hour GOP debate:

"I watched eagerly when Carly Fiorina first walked on stage to see how high her heels were," said our very own Arianna Huffington. "I immediately recognized the heels she was wearing, as I have the same Manolo Blahnik pumps in black. They're high -- 3 1/2 inches! I personally wear them when I know I'm sitting down! I love them and completely understand why she chose them, in terms of style. But, as the debate dragged on, I wondered how uncomfortable she must have been, especially since she didn't just have to stand there looking elegant but being alert and firing on all cylinders...."

But the height of the heel aside, it reminds us of what was once said about actor/dancer Fred Astaire and his legendary dance partner: "Sure he was great, but don't forget Ginger Rogers did everything he did backwards ... and in high heels!"

Who originated that Ginger Rogers line? Ann Richards? No. Frank and Ernest:

"If I were going to make up an alias, I wouldn't pick Rosenberg. I'd pick Jolie or Pitt."

"Do terrorists wear Manolo Blahniks? I can tell you Donna Karan does not make anything that hides a bomb.... I tried the tears; they didn't work. I tried reasoning. I couldn't bribe because I didn't have any money..."

Does Joan Rivers look like a terrorist? Well, she does look suspicious.

"The R.N.C. cleverly used the party committee's money to avoid the liability that would have occurred if campaigns funds were used."

Said campaign finance expert Kenneth Gross about that $150,ooo the Republican National Committee spent on clothes and accessories for Sarah Palin.

Had the purchases been made by the McCain campaign, it would be a conversion of campaign money into personal use, which is prohibited. The same rule does not apply to money from party committees.

Yes, diabolically devious of them -- wasn't it? -- to follow the law.

Yesterday, I cleverly drove 25 miles an hour in a 25 mph zone.

***

That's tucked down at the bottom of the NYT article by Patrick Healy and Michael Luo. Let's pick over the rest of it:

... Republicans expressed fear that weeks of tailoring Ms. Palin as an average “hockey mom” would fray amid revelations that the Republican Party outfitted her with expensive clothing from high-end stores.

"Tailoring" and "fray" ... a cute use of sewing and fabric metaphor.

Healy and Luo note that she needed the clothes and needed someone to accomplish the shopping for her, as she was suddenly thrown into constant campaigning in widely variable climates.

Yet Republicans expressed consternation publicly and privately...

Can you quote any?

[O]n “The View” ... Joy Behar, a co-host, noted the McCain campaign’s outreach to blue-collar workers — like an Ohio plumber who recently chided Senator Barack Obama over taxes — after another co-host, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, defended the expenditures....

Behar, not a Republican, but a Democrat and a comedian, surely had a comic opportunity and took it. More about her joke in a minute.

“It looks like nobody with a political antenna was working on this,” said Ed Rollins, a Republican political consultant who ran President Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984. “It just undercuts Palin’s whole image as a hockey mom, a ‘one-of-us’ kind of candidate.”

Oh, yes, Ed Rollins, last seen advising Mike Huckabee and making the insightful comment: "To me, hitting somebody, knocking somebody down, is a great feeling. Firing out a negative ad just feels amazing... What I have to do is make sure that my anger with a guy like Romney, whose teeth I want to knock out, doesn't get in the way of my thought process." I'll bet he wasn't the first guy Healy and Luo phoned up to get an Republican mouthing the quote they wanted.

And that's the only on-the-record, negative Republican quote.

***

Now, back to that Joy Behar joke: "I don’t think Joe the Plumber wears Manolo Blahniks." Note how spectacularly Behar fails to get Joe the Plumber's way of thinking.

Joe was not yet successful, but had a dream of buying his own business, and he thought the incentive structure should remain place. He didn't want those making $250,000 to be subjected to confiscatory tax rates.

You may think that Joe the Plumber -- and the "I am Joe the Plumber" types -- are foolish not to express antipathy toward those who are economically successful, but they do not. As they put it they want to get rich too. They look at rich people -- or so they say -- and think -- not: that bastard doesn't know how I struggle -- but: I want to get there too.

In this light, Joe the Plumber wouldn't look at Palin's nice clothes and seethe with jealousy. He would think: I'm inspired to work harder so I can get some great clothes too.

***

Now, 2 things:

1. Palin was given the clothes. She didn't earn the money to buy them. So maybe she's not Joe's model of success. Joe doesn't want a handout. He wants to earn it and not have the government take it away. But Palin attained the level of success that made other people want (and, really, need) to give her these things, which is earning them.

2. Behar was also trying to be funny with the image of a man wearing fancy women's shoes, but Manolo Blahnik does make men's shoes:



Yes, slingbacks and open toes. Blue suede shoes. Deal with it. Need to go more conservative?



I can see Joe in those! The "What Not to Wear" guy, Clinton Kelly -- that repressive bastard -- says those shoes say "Hey look what I have on that you don't have the balls to wear." I say: have the balls.

ADDED: This newer "I Am Joe the Plumber" makes the point even better than the one I linked to, above: