"Blown away by the massive ordnance penetrators that have phallicized our world, female political stars seem to have disappeared off the map."

"We were promised Mamala and instead we got Mountainhead.... Why is mighty-voiced Michelle Obama relegating herself to that sappy podcast with her brother? Why are we supposed to admire 44-year-old former New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern, once idolized for her brave gesture of donning a hijab after a 2019 terrorist attack on a Christchurch mosque, for drippily dropping out in January 2023 because she found politics 'pretty unrelenting.'... And Gretchen 'Big Gretch' Whitmer [has]... now come out from behind the folder, but still… Meanwhile... Liz Cheney... now describes herself on X as 'proud rodeo mom, soccer mom, baseball mom, hockey mom, constitutional conservative'—in that order. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski... gives a full-throated waffle at the suggestion of daylight between her and the rest of her insane party. 'There is some openness to exploring something different than the status quo,' she said. To the barricades!"

Writes Tina Brown.

"Divorce rumors have been following the Obamas for some time.... Michelle, as a solo artist, has been out and about..."

"... particularly as she promotes her podcast... She’s also been a regular guest on fellow famous people’s shows. This month alone, she went on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang to talk about bickering with Barack over their thermostat, and on The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett, where she insisted once more that 'everyone would know' if she and Barack were breaking up. 'I’m not a martyr,' she said. 'I would be problem-solving in public: "Let me tell you what he did."'"

That's from New York Magazine, which has a sarcastic headline — "Michelle and Barack Obama Are Dating Again" — because it's pushing back on the New York Post article that's titled "Barack and Michelle Obama spotted on swanky date night in NYC as divorce rumors swirl."

Repeated insistence... sounds like protesting too much.

And is it really true that if she and Barack were breaking up she's be out in public, problem-solving, dishing on what he did? I'd like to think she would not, but it was only 5 days ago that I was blogging "Why are men's podcasts so different from women's...?" after Danica Patrick went on "The Sage Steele Show"

How Michelle Obama reminded me of Jordan Peterson.

I'd just listened to Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan's podcast. I blogged about some of it, here, yesterday. Peterson was criticizing woman who fail to develop beyond their natural, instinctive empathy. Let me give you a bit more of what he said:

"I've been lecturing to people for a long time about how to conduct themselves in life so they don't become a tyrant or a handmaiden to the tyrants, a silent handmaiden to the tyrants, let's say.... Because women are more agreeable, they're more prone to manipulation by psychopaths because their primary ethos is nurturing. For a naive woman, every victim is a baby...."

Now, you may find it odd, but I hear echoes of that as I am listening to Michelle Obama in "You Need to Learn to Say No (Even to an Inauguration)," the new episode of her podcast.

I know, your first inclination may be to mock the "poor me" aspect of this. She doesn't have a thing to wear... to the Inauguration. And not having a thing to wear, for her, means instructing her team of clothing wranglers to avoid readying the appropriate outfit, which they otherwise actively assemble for every possible occasion that might pop up (or "pop off"). She is not like other women. Very funny. But true! So work past that instinct to mock. I want you to think about how she is confessing to the agreeableness vulnerability that Jordan Peterson sees in women.

Michelle says:

"Stop trying to sane-wash, RFK Jr. Just. Stop. It."

That's the top-rated comment at The Washington Post's "Did RFK Jr. or Michelle Obama say it about food? Take our quiz" (free-access link).

All that's going on there — the supposed "sane-washing" — is that you are confronted with how much RFK Jr. and Michelle Obama sound like each other.

I closely followed this issue on a daily basis for the entire relevant time period, and I scored 3 out of 7 — worse than the average of random guessing!

And did you listen to the NYT "Daily" yesterday? Here's "How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Health Freedom’ Rose to Power" (audio and transcript at Podscribe).

The classic "Fear and" title is "Fear and Loathing," but somehow, in these days of loathing, we've got "Fear and Joy."

I'm so skeptical... as I'm reading "Fear and Joy in Chicago/The excitement that radiated through the Democratic National Convention was the other side of what had until recently been a deep despair" by Fintan O'Toole (NYRB).

[T]he Democrats in Chicago were singing a redemption song. It had three parts: valediction, malediction, and benediction....

Having taken a break to listen to "Redemption Song" (see below), I will concentrate on the malediction:

[B]ad-mouthing Trump at a Democratic convention is not that hard. Yet it too had its complications. Just as the Democrats had to navigate between loving Joe and giving him a jubilant cheerio, they had to figure out how to manage another contradictory feat: cutting Trump down to size while retaining a clear sense of the threat he poses to the very existence of the American republic...

They seemed — to O'Toole — to be trying "to reconfigure Trump as the Wizard of Oz, a little man who has conjured an illusion of MAGA magnitude." 

Even the renegade Republican Adam Kinzinger was entirely on message when he called Trump “a weak man pretending to be strong. He is a small man pretending to be big…. He puts on quite a show, but there is no real strength there.”

I add my favorite blog tag, "big and small." 

"And multiple speakers delighted the crowd by alluding to the fabricated viral claim that Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, wrote in his memoir about having sex with furniture."

"'I wouldn’t trust them to move my couch,' Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said of the GOP ticket on the final night. 'I know a couch commando when I see one,' Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said minutes later. The jabs were just part of a more expansive case against Trump that Democrats laid out over four nights in Chicago. But they reflected a broader shift in tone for Democrats toward a no-holds-barred kind of rhetorical warfare many in the party once eschewed. Eight years after the Philadelphia convention cheered Michelle Obama’s famous line 'When they go low, we go high' — and with Trump still waging a campaign full of personal insults and baseless accusations... some Democrats said they are tired of being polite...."

From "Democrats once strove to ‘go high’ against Trump. Not anymore. This year’s convention culminated recent efforts to needle Trump on topics known to strike a nerve in the former president, with some Democrats saying they are tired of being polite" (WaPo)(free-access link).

This gets my "civility bullshit" tag, which in this case reflects my belief that the old "When they go low, we go high" was just a strategy choice, to be abandoned when it didn't seem effective... or when the low material is tantalizing enough, like that well-upholstered couch that seems be calling out to you.

"Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn’t it?... A familiar feeling that has been buried too deep for far too long."

"You know what I’m talking about. It’s the contagious power of hope. The anticipation, the energy, the exhilaration of once again being on the cusp of a brighter day. The chance to vanquish the demons of fear, division and hate that have consumed us and continue pursuing the unfinished promise of this great nation, the dream that our parents and grandparents fought and died and sacrificed for. America, hope is making a comeback. Yeah. But, to be honest, I am realizing that, until recently, I have mourned the dimming of that hope. And maybe you’ve experienced the same feelings, that deep pit in my stomach, a palpable sense of dread about the future.... For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black..... Doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people’s lives better..... We need to overwhelm any effort to suppress us..... Let us work like our lives depend on it, and let us keep moving our country forward and go higher, yes, always higher than we’ve ever gone before...."

Said Michelle Obama — I've edited it down — at the Democratic National Convention last night.

Watch the whole thing for yourself and form your own opinion:

How many times did she say "hope"? I counted: 7.

How many times did she say "Biden"? I counted: 0.  

She said "Kamala"17 times. And, by the way, she said "Harris" only 5 times, and each time, it was the full name "Kamala Harris." I think she (and her speechwriters) are showing us the preferred locution — say either the full name or the first name. "Kamala" is distinctive in a way that "Harris" is not. Ask the person on the street, "What do you think of Harris?" and I bet most people will express puzzlement: Who's Harris?

"Going high is the only thing that works, because when we go low, when we use those same tactics of degrading and dehumanizing others, we just become part of the ugly noise that’s drowning out everything else. We degrade ourselves. We degrade the very causes for which we fight."

Said Michelle Obama, at the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

Quoted in "Walz’s 'couch' quip, and Democrats’ growing comfort in going low/The Democratic VP nominee’s apparent reference to a lewd, fake internet story reflects a more bare-knuckle campaign against a GOP presidential nominee who has spent years plumbing new depths." That's an essay by Aaron Blake, at WaPo.

It gets my "civility bullshit" tag, because civility has been advocated in the past, and Democrats are in a phase where they see an entitlement to reject it.

This also gets my "masturbation" tag. Who would have predicted that Democrats would lean heavily into masturbation shaming? It's 30 years since Bill Clinton fired Jocelyn Elders!

"And we're going to have some fun with this, aren't we?"

Harris murmurs into the phone to Obama and Obama:

Earlier this week, Michelle and I called our friend @KamalaHarris. We told her we think she’ll make a fantastic President of the United States, and that she has our full support. At this critical moment for our country, we’re going to do everything we can to make sure she wins in… pic.twitter.com/0UIS0doIbA

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) July 26, 2024

I call her "Harris." I was going to call her "my girl Kamala" — because that's what Mrs. Obama calls her in that phone call — but the powers that be have warned us not to call her "Kamala" and of course you can't say "girl" — unless you can — and "my" is a terrible problem, perhaps insinuating a perverse sense of ownership. So I'll keep my distance. "Harris" is it. Don't harass me.

Now, about this concept of "fun." It might be the new word of the day, the word on the memo that everyone got. It came up in this new Ezra Klein podcast, "This Is How Democrats Win in Wisconsin":

I mean, Sunday, I was still hearing from Democrats worried about Harris... And now, I mean, watching the party not just converge around her, but feel a real thrill around her, like really, really become passionate Harris stans, like watching the whole party fall outta the coconut tree and live unburdened by what has been, and only in the imagining of what could be. It's fun to watch Democrats have fun. They have not had fun in a long time. And it's also a good reminder that people don't know how something is gonna feel until it actually happens....

People talking about fun... enthusing This is fun... that's not a good marker of fun... whatever fun is....

I think of Zippy the Pinhead: "Are we having fun yet?"

And "And she'll have fun fun fun/'Til her daddy takes the T-bird away...."

And "Fun is the one thing that money can’t buy."

"No, you keen-eyed MAGA sleuths, Biden’s aides didn’t schedule an early debate so that they could replace him after he flails."

"Nor did they engineer Hunter Biden’s conviction just to look virtuous. Democrats, it is not the case that if journalists just stop talking about Biden’s age, many Americans miraculously won’t notice it. Nor are there tea leaves auguring a revolt against Trump at the Republican convention. A respected public intellectual privately promoted that idea to me. And Michelle Obama will not — abracadabra! — be riding to the rescue.... Indulging such illusions is dangerous. Those of us who believe that Trump’s return to the White House would be ruinous must prosaically and persistently make the case for Biden’s superiority, flaws and all. We must plan, plod, slog. No sorcery will save us."

Writes Frank Bruni, in "The Election of Magical Thinking" (NYT).

Is it just dangerous illusion and hope of "sorcery" that has us thinking about ways to replace Biden as the Democratic candidate?! Biden plainly looks and sounds as though he's not capable of performing the job anymore. Trusting him even until January 2025 seems like more of a dangerous game of magical thinking. Bruni has written his column to pooh-pooh those of us who are seriously worried about Biden and to take credit for pretending there's no problem worth talking about. 

But I don't think Bruni is delusional. I think he's bullshitting in print but in his head he's got it figured out. It's too hard to replace Biden* and it seems less likely to work than just crossing your fingers and — la la la — moving along as if nothing is amiss and you are crazy if you think so.** And you know who's really crazy? Donald Trump.

_______________________________

* Word that does not appear in Bruni's column: Kamala.

** There's a word for this: gaslighting.

You have to say "If drafted, I will not run; if nominated, I will not accept; if elected, I will not serve."

That's the unambiguous "Sherman statement."

Everyone knows this.

If your director of communications says you "will not be running for President," you've conspicuously failed to say the magic words. This is especially true if there's no occasion for running for the nomination because the incumbent President is in your party and he's running, but the delegates he's collecting in the primaries may, at the time of the convention, be free to nominate somebody else, somebody who hasn't run for President but who may accept the nomination if it is handed to her and may, if elected, deign to serve.

I'm reading "Michelle Obama's office says the former first lady 'will not be running for president' in 2024/Democrats and Republicans have mused about a Michelle Obama candidacy, albeit for different reasons" (NBC News).

"She wants to run. So, this is her way — now that she’s talking about politics, if she were really concerned about..."

"... the future and tenor of the country, she would be on the campaign trail with Joe Biden. She is just as concerned about him as she is about Donald Trump. This is her way of sending out a little canary into the coal mine to see if it lives, and I think this could be beginning of her campaign."

Said Fox News commentator Kennedy, quoted in "Fox News Hosts Claim Michelle Obama Isn’t Helping Biden’s Campaign Because 'She Wants To Run'" (Mediaite).

"The world is in a permacrisis currently with the COVID-19 aftermath, the war in Ukraine, climate change issues, political instability, the energy crisis in Europe, recession and the cost-of-living crisis."

That's a quote that appeared in the Millennium Post Newspaper (Nexis) on 18 December 18, 2022 and that is one of 3 quotes the OED chose to exemplify the word "permacrisis," which, it announces today, it has just added to its dictionary.

The definition is obvious: "A situation characterized by constant and significant turmoil or instability; (now) spec. one that is widespread across a society and caused by an ongoing series of events such as war, economic recession, a pandemic disease, etc."

I think of "permacrisis" as as a political strategy to make people feel that we are always in special dire circumstances, justifying unusual emergency measures, and warranting the sacrifice of our personal pleasure and freedom.

I can't help thinking: "Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

"As with the book itself, which mixes homey anecdotes with advice on how to handle anxiety, pressure and self-doubt, the clothes seem personal..."

"... the wardrobe of someone who has shrugged off the filters and decided to dress for herself as opposed to dressing to please (or maybe just not to upset) the largest possible constituency. Like the fits or not, there’s no denying that Mrs. Obama seemed to be having fun with what she was wearing.... Yet given how strategic Mrs. Obama was about her wardrobe choices during her husband’s administration... given how aware she has been that her every look is followed... it’s impossible not to think that the current shift is about more than just physical comfort. It’s also about the comfort of being at ease with your own self. And in that, it is a deliberate statement of intent. Of freedom. Mrs. Obama is setting her own rules, defining herself according to her own expectations, as opposed to the expectations of the role she has to fill. Who wears the pants? At this point, she does."

Writes Vanessa Friedman in "Michelle Obama’s Fashion Declaration of Independence/The former first lady dressed with a new sense of freedom on her book tour" (NYT).

It's fine for Michelle Obama to wear pants, and I like some of these new looks, notably the "Versace zebra stripes," but, good Lord, can we stop saying "Who wears the pants?" This is a retrograde sexist slur. I'm sure Friedman didn't mean it that way, but why does anyone ever feel the call to use a cliché? It's supposed to be funny and lighthearted because — what? — she actually is literally wearing pants?

That's been a stale twist for decades — flipping a well-worn metaphor back to its original meaning.

So why do it — especially where it necessarily entails sideswipe at Barack Obama's masculinity? It puts Friedman in a set with some of the lowest political humor on the internet, which portrays Michelle as the man and Barack as the woman.

"Roseanne Barr. The embattled 69-year-old comedy legend... The outspoken star... the mother of five... The 'She-Devil' actress...."

I'm noticing the "second mention" silliness in "Unapologetic Roseanne Barr returns, blasts critics: ‘I’m a goddamn American’" (NY Post).

Anyway, she's in the news because there's a documentary about her — “Roseanne: Kicked Out of Hollywood.” We're told it's "on Reelz." I have maxed out on streaming services, if that's what it even is. How are we supposed to keep track? 

It used to be when something was on, it was on the TV that came through the air for free. You had to be careful to find out what time and what channel, because if you missed it, you missed it. But now what's on stays on, but the question is do you get the thing that it's on? And do you have room in your head to care?

But back to the second mention problem — the needless belief that after you've written someone's name, if you need to refer to them again,  you can't just use a pronoun or repeat the name, you have to say something like "the mother of five" or "the 'She-Devil' actress." 

The next article I clicked on at the NY Post — "Fans shade Viola Davis’ ‘cringey’ Michelle Obama portrayal in ‘The First Lady’" — did the same thing: "Michelle Obama... former President Barack Obama’s wife... the mother of two...."

Melania was cold. Jill is warm.

Ugh. I should have steeled myself against this offensive goo. It's so very predictable. But I wasn't ready — it's still November — and this caught me before I'd prepared myself to simply laugh cynically, which is what it deserves: 

"Jill Biden’s first White House Christmas brings back a warmer, simpler vibe/The first lady chose 'Gifts From the Heart' as this year’s theme, filling rooms with shooting stars and peace doves" (WaPo).

A taste of the holiday fare:

The light, sound and smell of wood fires burning in the Green and Red rooms were just the first sign of the intimacy Jill Biden sought.... Gone are Melania Trump’s imposing — and some said, scary — blood red trees in the East Colonnade, from 2018, which late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon likened to Christmas in hell. Gone are the dozens of life-size “snow people,” wearing scarves and hats, in the first lady’s garden, installed by Michelle Obama in 2015, and moved inside in 2016.... “There’s a whole kind of Chucky element to them,” [Barack Obama] said. “They’re a little creepy.” Instead, Jill Biden’s Colonnade is a lower-key presentation, with shooting stars and peace doves hanging from the ceiling.... Biden’s first foray into holiday decorating at the White House was not glitzy or opulent, but rather an enhanced version of how many American families decorate their own homes, with lots of candles and twinkling lights....

So "some said" Melania's Christmas decorations were "scary." Why not cherry-pick the meanest things "some" are saying about Jill's decorations? I'll just read between the lines and flip the descriptions of Jill's stuff into the negative: It's so thudding uncreative. No grandeur, no awe, just the rich and powerful serving up their idea of what ordinary Americans supposedly do with their own home. 

Now, I must admit that WaPo isn't completely partisan, because — did you notice? — it takes a shot at Michelle Obama too, though the insult is a quote from her husband, who thought her snowmen and -women were "creepy" and Chucky-like. 

Ugh. The competition assigned to first ladies. Who's warm? Who's genuine? Who's got the best taste in clothes and interior decoration? Why is this still going on?

"Michelle Obama said that it was 'the best piece of art in any form that I have ever seen,' an observation that put Michelangelo, Mozart and Miles Davis in their place."

"There have been a few detractors but most have been confined to isolated pockets of social media, like guerrilla fighters facing overwhelming odds. What is it that generates so much excitement?... [W]hatever [Hamilton]’s true merits, it has at least bridged the ever-growing gap between Broadway and popular song. Think of it, if you like, as Les Mis for the beatbox generation. Just as the Boublil and Schönberg celebration of life on the Parisian barricades goes overboard with the bombast, so Miranda’s narrative bludgeons you with facts. The one obvious problem is that the rap lyrics are at the same time mundane and relentlessly dense.... The effect is sometimes numbing: imagine if Cole Porter, who had a more nimble grasp of language, wrote nothing but list songs. We’d be bored."

From "Hamilton review — Facts aren’t music to everyone’s ears" by Clive Davis (London Times).

"Hamilton" is reopening in London after the lockdown, so this is a reassessment from Davis. If you want to get into the subject of how people in England respond to an American telling of the Revolution, you'll have to go back to reviews written in 2017. So don't wonder about why Davis isn't doing that. 

He's mostly bellyaching about rap, and I thought the complaint "rap lyrics are at the same time mundane and relentlessly dense" was worth thinking about. I don't listen to enough rap to have a valid opinion, but I do find it offputting because it demands a lot work out of the listener. You have to pay attention... though I always resort to looking up the lyrics and reading them if there are ever lyrics I want to be familiar with, as occasionally happens.

But what is this category of songs called "list songs" — "imagine if Cole Porter... wrote nothing but list songs"? I'd never heard of this, but there's a Wikipedia article:

"The war on childhood obesity reached its zenith with the 2010 introduction of the national 'Let’s Move!' campaign, 'dedicated to solving the problem of obesity within a generation.'"

"It was a campaign against 'childhood obesity' — not specific health conditions or the behaviors that may contribute to those health conditions. It wasn’t a campaign against foods with little nutritional value, or against the unchecked poverty that called for such low-cost, shelf-stable foods. It was a campaign against a body type — specifically, children’s body types...."

From "Leave Fat Kids Alone/The 'war on childhood obesity' has only caused shame," an op-ed by Aubrey Gordon in The New York Times

This is the most negative thing about Michelle Obama I have ever seen in The New York Times. Not that the op-ed ever says the name Michelle Obama. I was going to check to see if the comments over there bring up Michelle Obama, but there are no comments on this piece. Perhaps that's to protect Michelle Obama, but probably also to protect the author of the op-ed from any of shaming, the op-ed being staunchly anti-shame.

Here's the Wikipedia article on "Let's Move." It begins: "Let's Move! was a public health campaign in the United States, led by Michelle Obama, wife of then-President Barack Obama."

Social media didn't care about Kamala.

From "Michelle Obama won the Democratic convention" (Axios):

"There was one glaring omission from Michelle Obama’s 20-minute Democratic National Convention speech Monday night — Kamala Harris."

"That’s because the former first lady recorded her rousing speech before Joe Biden selected Sen. Harris of California as his running mate. The speech was delivered remotely like all others at the DNC because of the coronavirus pandemic, and The Associated Press reports it was filmed before Harris was named last week as Biden’s VP candidate, indicating the choice was so close to the vest and down to the wire that even the Obamas were not in the loop."

The NY Post reports.

So they'd rather have us believe that what was served up last night was pre-recorded a week ago — it was that stale! — than have us think that Michelle Obama didn't want to say anything about Kamala Harris.