"Michael Cohen’s voice sounded truly bizarre in that podcast clip celebrating Trump's indictment on March 30 last year. "

"Giddy, high-pitched, and he was speaking so fast that if you didn’t know better you’d think the tape had been artificially sped up. It also offered jurors a completely different version of the Cohen they are seeing on the witness stand, where he has remained calm and deliberate with every word. [Trump's lawyer] Todd Blanche plays a second clip of Michael Cohen from his podcast, in which he says he hopes 'that this man ends up in prison,' and 'revenge is a dish best served cold,' and 'you better believe I want this man to go down and rot inside for what he did to me and my family.' Cohen's New York accent — he is from the Five Towns, on Long Island — is very pronounced in the podcast clips...."

From the NYT live coverage of the Trump trial. Here's a free-access link.

This gets my rarely used "revenge" tag.

I delved into the topic most deeply back in July 2011, here. Quoting Wikipedia:

"The enduring challenge for any activist is both to dream of almost-unimaginable justice and to make the case to nonbelievers that your dreams are practical."

"The problem is particularly acute in animal-rights activism. Ending wild-animal suffering is laughably hard (our efforts at ending human suffering don’t exactly recommend us to the task); obviously, so is changing the landscape of factory farms.... In 2014, the British sociologist Richard Twine suggested that the vegan isn’t unlike the feminist of yore, in that both come across as killjoys whose 'resistance against routinized norms of commodification and violence' repels those who prefer the comforts of the status quo...."

Writes Elizabeth Barber, in "What Would It Mean to Treat Animals Fairly? Each year, billions of animals die for human ends. In two new books, Martha Nussbaum and Peter Singer insist that we stop the suffering" (The New Yorker).

I don't know if it has anything to do with being Catholic, but Nancy Pelosi must know that it's the other party that is supposed to own the brand "hate."

Nevertheless, I will read the Karen Tumulty column in WaPo, "Nancy Pelosi and that four-letter word." Tumulty accepts the religious explanation for Pelosi's fury at the notion that she hates Trump — "those who know her well insist religious belief is at the core of everything Pelosi does." There's also this strange distinction:

Disgust, to a Catholic, is not the same as hatred....

Strange to me. I'm not a Catholic. Is "hate" a freakout word but "disgust" just fine? To me, disgust is worse than hate. Maybe. I'm not sure. Actions based on hate may be worse. The hater might act out in violence. Those whose insides roil with disgust — they shrink away, as from disease. If you disgust someone, you might count on them to stay away, but if they hate you, you're in danger. There's something so lowly about disgust.

Oh! Am I disgusted? Ha ha. But you see my point: What kind of person are you, if you feel disgust for other people? Isn't that the stuff of racism? Isn't that what makes you want to put half of your fellow citizens in a "basket of deplorables" where you won't have to see them?

Back to Tumulty:

Pelosi’s announcement that the House would proceed with impeachment was suffused with religion. “In signing the Declaration of Independence, our founders invoked a firm reliance on divine providence,” Pelosi said. 

She is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.

ADDED: The subject of disgust is profound, and I wanted to call special attention to the writings of Martha Nussbaum on the subject. Let me quote from "Back Talk: Martha C. Nussbaum/A conversation with the author of From Disgust to Humanity about various forms of opposition to gay equality" (The Nation, 2010). The subject at the time was gay people, and I presume the philosopher's ideas were not limited or unduly tied to that particular worldly concern, that the critique of "the politics of disgust" was not simply a means to the end of improving life for gay people.

Things men did to Martha Nussbaum that she didn't react to in a conventionally feminist way.

Sorry but I've got one more New Yorker article to blog about "THE PHILOSOPHER OF FEELINGS/Martha Nussbaum’s far-reaching ideas illuminate the often ignored elements of human life—aging, inequality, and emotion," by Rachel Aviv. I just wanted to pull out 2 things:

1. From her experience in the graduate program in classics at Harvard, in 1969: "When her thesis adviser, G. E. L. Owen, invited her to his office, served sherry, spoke about life’s sadness, recited Auden, and reached over to touch her breasts, she says, she gently pushed him away, careful not to embarrass him. 'Just as I never accused my mother of being drunk, even though she was always drunk,' she wrote, 'so I managed to keep my control with Owen, and I never said a hostile word.' She didn’t experience the imbalance of power that makes sexual harassment so destructive, she said, because she felt 'much healthier and more powerful than he was.'"

2. From the 1990s, when she was in a relationship with Cass Sunstein: "In an influential essay, titled 'Objectification,' Nussbaum builds on a passage written by Sunstein, in which he suggests that some forms of sexual objectification can be both ineradicable and wonderful. Straying from the standard line of feminist thought, Nussbaum defends Sunstein’s idea, arguing that there are circumstances in which being treated as a sex object, a 'mysterious thinglike presence,' can be humanizing, rather than morally harmful. It allows us to achieve a state that her writing often elevates: the 'abnegation of self-containment and self-sufficiency.'"

Revenge, the Wikipedia article.

A report that the wife of Dominique Strass-Kahn is seeking "revenge" got me thinking about the specific meaning of the word. Surely, it doesn't include merely remembering who kicked you when you were down.

My curiosity about the concept was sufficient to get me to Wikipedia, where I was, first, interested that there was an article at all, and second, interested that it was as short as it was. It wasn't super-short, like a dictionary definition. If you're going to purport to cover the history of revenge and its function in society and religion plus that famous saying, how do you keep the length to 2 screens?

Presumably: editing! Wikipedia is all about editing. People load crap in. That's the easy part. The miracle of Wikipedia is in the editing.

Oh, come on, Althouse. It's not a miracle. I mean, check it out:  "A miracle is an event attributed to divine intervention."

No, no. I'm not going there. The Daily News used "revenge" to portray a specific individual in a negative light for the titillation of readers. I used hyperbole, in a complimentary sense, to refer to the behind-the-scenes work of thousands of editors who deserve some extra praise and thanks.

Both miracles and revenge play a part in human storytelling, but revenge is a much better story. "Deus ex machina" is not the most admirable plot device, as Aristotle explained:

It is obvious that the solutions of plots too should come about as a result of the plot itself, and not from a contrivance... There should be nothing improbable in the incidents; otherwise, it should be outside the tragedy....

Revenge makes a good tragedy. See "Hamlet."  If you haven't seen it already.

Of the psychological, moral, and cultural foundation for revenge, philosopher Martha Nussbaum has written: "The primitive sense of the just—remarkably constant from several ancient cultures to modern institutions ...—starts from the notion that a human life ... is a vulnerable thing, a thing that can be invaded, wounded, violated by another's act in many ways. For this penetration, the only remedy that seems appropriate is a counter invasion, equally deliberate, equally grave. 

For this penetration.... a good image, when we're talking about rape. But what of the false accusation of rape? That too is a penetration.

"And to right the balance truly, the retribution must be exactly, strictly proportional to the original encroachment."

I think revenge asks for more.  Nussbaum explains the moral aspect of revenge, not the passionate edge that wants more than justice. There is passion, but wait...

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

That is the saying about revenge. And it doesn't suggest becoming dispassionate. You're not using your measuring spoons and cups, preparing a dish "strictly proportional to the original encroachment." The cold dish that is the best revenge is not a calibrated diet dish.

Nussbaum's Heart-Healthy Justice Salad is not revenge.