"Biden and his supporters are intent on making Trump the Nelson Mandela of America."

Said Trump pollster John McLaughlin, quoted in "How 'The Nelson Mandela of America' Is Making Bank Off of His Criminal Trial/'I’m catching up on my fucking sleep ’cause I’m bored,' Trump told one source" (The Bulwark).

Wow, that caught my eye, and not just because "I’m catching up on my fucking sleep ’cause I’m bored" is hilarious. Just this morning — and before reading that — I was saying, in conversation, that if Trump goes to jail the Trump movement will gain energy and "He'll become Nelson Mandela."

"She was a blank canvas, and we had a bucket of paint."

Said senior Trump adviser Chris LaCivita, quoted in "How Trump crushed Haley’s momentum — and came closer to clinching the nomination/The former president and his allies trained their attacks on the former U.N. ambassador in the week before the N.H. primary, which Trump won easily on Tuesday" (WaPo).

Behind closed doors, Trump’s team had long viewed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the bigger threat.... They quietly agreed to allow Haley to surge.... But now it was time to train Trump’s full arsenal of attacks.... In what senior Trump adviser Chris LaCivita described as a “pincer” movement, Trump bombarded Haley from both ideological sides....

[Nikki Haley had been] a guarded candidate who was reluctant to fully engage with voters and the media, and whose tight, streamlined stump speech offered prescriptions for multiple problems — but without a clear sense of what her top priorities would be....

“She was a blank canvas, and we had a bucket of paint,” LaCivita said....

And here's something Governor John Sununu said Haley said to him, as she was (successfully) seeking his endorsement: 

"Man, this 'live free or die' thing is real — like you can feel it. I want to carry that to the White House."

How free are you if you're "guarded" and "reluctant" and reciting a "tight, streamlined stump speech"? You keep yourself free to be a blank canvas onto which others can project what they want.

Meanwhile, Trump isn't tight. He's very loose. I've been listening to his rally speeches. He's not guarded. He's freely expressive. But he's facing 91 felony charges, and his antagonists (some of them) picture him in prison. You can't "live free" there.

Ah, but you can, and he's already thought it through. He said this in Concord, New Hampshire last October:

"I don’t mind being Nelson Mandela because I’m doing it for a reason. We’ve got to save our country from these fascists, these lunatics that we’re dealing with. They’re horrible people and they’re destroying our country."

"Trump hired a 'Faux-Bama' to participate in a video in which Trump 'ritualistically belittled the first black president and then fired him.'"

"[Michael] Cohen's book, 'Disloyal: A Memoir,' doesn't name the man who was allegedly hired to play Obama or provide a specific date for the incident, but it does include a photograph of Trump sitting behind a desk, facing a Black man wearing a suit with an American flag pin affixed to the lapel. On Trump's desk are two books, one displaying Obama's name in large letters."

CNN reports.

How weird is this? It's similar to debate preparation, where someone is brought in to play the role of the candidate's opponent, so he can sharpen his arguments and work on an effective self-presentation. Trump, of course, would never have to face Obama in a debate, but he was running against a continuation of the Obama administration, and he did need to practice arguing against Obama, even though he didn't need to figure out how to be in the room with him and counter his weighty presence. The exercise of telling him off to his face might have been conceived of as an effective way to build Trump's style and confidence. Put Trump in his familiar milieu as a business boss with Obama cut down to the size of a subordinate whom Trump could fire. Do the theater of "The Apprentice." It's a way to practice.

It could also have been an idea for an ad. It might have worked. But it wasn't used, perhaps because it didn't build the belief that Trump has analyzed Obama's work and seen why we shouldn't want the same thing anymore. Cohen isn't a credible witness, but if we take his characterization seriously, once videoed, the scene looked like Trump had "ritualistically belittled" Obama, and it would have been quite sensible to predict that the ad would stimulate a protectiveness toward Obama. Trump certainly managed to criticize Obama successfully, but we never had a picture of him humiliating the man personally. If that was to be an ad, it was scrapped, and that was a sensible enough decision, in retrospect, because Trump won the election.

And now we have Cohen, trying to make some money and to hurt his former client, with this book "Disloyal." With that title, the publisher flaunts Cohen's contemptibility — that's the best move, with this author nobody likes. So the Trump-hating media can rifle through the book and what does it find? CNN leads with this imitation Obama story. That's the worst thing in the book? It's new and it's concrete... and it doesn't rest entirely on Cohen's credibility, because there's a photograph:



Other cherry-picking in the CNN article:

"And this is my Nelson Mandela couch... with matching suit."

Nelson Mandela, imprisoned, was told "Indians get trousers. Indians get socks. Boys get shorts."

He petitioned for long pants.

For the annals of Men in Shorts.

Given the shocking lack of security at the Mandela memorial, why did the Secret Service allow the President to appear?

"The stadium's main entrance was 'completely unattended... There were no workers performing bag checks or pat-downs — there were no magnetometers to walk through, no metal detector wands being used — anywhere.'"

When South African security officials did perform security checks, they were often trying to restrain the bodyguards and entourage members of visiting dignitaries and celebrities. But conflicts seem to have been resolved by letting everybody in...

The interpreter for the deaf during the speeches at the Mandela memorial wasn't signing at all but just "flapping his arms around."

The national director of the Deaf Federation of South Africa said the man was "moving his hands around, but there was no meaning in what he used his hands for."

It was not immediately clear how the bogus interpreter slipped onto the stage during the memorial service, where nearly 100 heads of state attended....

Experts agreed that the imposter interpreter was not signing American sign languages or any of South Africa's 11 official languages.

It seems funny for about 5 seconds, and then you realize that this marred a funeral and that it reveals a lack of security. 

(In the comments at the link: "I knew something was wrong when I saw him make the clipping sign and then the first down sign immediately after.")

At the memorial, Obama compared Mandela to Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln.

"In the arc of his life, we see a man who earned his place in history through struggle and shrewdness, persistence and faith. He tells us what's possible not just in the pages of dusty history books, but in our own lives as well."

Obama shakes hands with Raul Castro.

At the Mandela memorial.

Michelle and Barack Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton, and Laura and George W. Bush will all fly together on Air Force One.

To the Nelson Mandela funeral.

(Jimmy Carter too.)

"Sen. Ted Cruz's praise for Nelson Mandela met with criticism by supporters."

"The Texas senator posted a message on his Facebook page saying that Mandela would 'live in history as an inspiration for defenders of liberty,' but some of the comments posted called the former South African leader a 'terrorist, communist, scumbag and murderer.'"

Mobys?

"Nelson Mandela, who led the emancipation of South Africa from white minority rule and served as his country’s first black president..."

"... becoming an international emblem of dignity and forbearance, died Thursday. He was 95."

Mr. Mandela’s quest for freedom took him from the court of tribal royalty to the liberation underground to a prison rock quarry to the presidential suite of Africa’s richest country. And then, when his first term of office was up, unlike so many of the successful revolutionaries he regarded as kindred spirits, he declined a second term and cheerfully handed over power to an elected successor, the country still gnawed by crime, poverty, corruption and disease but a democracy, respected in the world and remarkably at peace.

"As the anti-apartheid icon fights for survival in a hospital, his family is clashing over where and how he is to be buried."

"The squabble is playing out in newspapers, online and on TV, angering a nation gripped with grief and praying collectively for their beloved 94-year-old former president to remain with them longer."

In microcosm, the tragic decline from one generation to the next.

"South Africa's Mandela 'improving' as Obama flies in."

Headline at Reuters inspires me to compose a poll. (I wish Mandela well and apologize in advance for the skepticism displayed here, which has nothing to do with South Africa's national hero, but with the U.S. President and the journalism profession, both of which desperately need critique.)

What is, most likely, the truth behind this headline?
	Nothing. It's just a coincidence of 2 events.
	Obama's arrival is having a healing effect on Mandela.
	The news of improvement was concocted to keep Mandela from overshadowing Obama.
pollcode.com free polls

"A Self is interesting to oneself and others, it acts as a sort of rudder in all the vicissitudes of life..."

"... and it thereby defines what used to be known as a career," wrote Jacques Barzun to his grandson, the lawprof, Charles Barzun, quoted by my son Jaltcoh here. The grandson had asked for help with what he called "a genuine crisis of identity... "brought on by the events of 9/11 and partly by my own discovery that I could not have cared less about my job." The grandfather assured him that he would find his way, which would look "like a path marked on a map" and "you will have made a Self, which is indeed a desirable possession."

The elder Barzun likens identity to a path and then to a rudder. Life is a journey. That's a very widely used metaphor. All these people who think of life as a journey: What are they picturing? Do they see a wilderness where you can find — or break — a path? Or do they see a map where you can mark a path? Or is it a journey over the ocean, in which your body is a ship, and what you want is a rudder?

The seafaring image implicit in Barzun's "rudder" made me think of that popular old poem that ends "I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul." I haven't heard that poem — "Invictus" — quoted in a long time, perhaps because it was overquoted to the point of triteness and nowadays people don't read poetry — other than in children's books. They'll listen to poetry, including the endless doggerel of rap (which is, perhaps, inspired by many childhood readings of Dr. Seuss books). But there was a time when lots of ordinary people knew the last verse of "Invictus" by heart.

I'm reading the Wikipedia page for "Invictus," scanning the long list of items under the heading "Influence." It begins with "Casablanca" (where "I am the master of my fate" is used ironically). The next item features Ronald Reagan:

In the 1945 film Kings Row, Parris Mitchell, a psychiatrist played by Robert Cummings, recites the first two stanzas of "Invictus" to his friend Drake McHugh, played by Ronald Reagan, before revealing to Drake that his legs were unnecessarily amputated by a cruel doctor.

Next, another President, FDR, at least the FDR of the 1958 play Sunrise at Campobello. Further down we encounter Nelson Mandela, who recited the poem to hearten his fellow prisoners. There's also Aung San Suu Kyi. And then... it's chilling to encounter this after beginning this post with the crisis of identity brought on by 9/11:

The Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh quoted the poem in its entirety as his final (written) statement.

The terrorists are out and about on their own ships in the seafaring journey of life, and they've got their rudders. Emergency inspiration available here.

What we lie about when we lie about reading.

"The men polled said they would be most impressed by women who read news websites, Shakespeare or song lyrics. Women said men should have read Nelson Mandela's biography or Shakespeare."

Since everyone seems to revere or fake-revere Shakespeare, why not hew to the Shakespearean answer to any question about what you've been reading? "Words, words, words."

But, man, Nelson Mandela's biography? That is incredibly lame of women to say they'd be hot for a man who gave that answer. And as for the men who say they'd be impressed by women who read song lyrics... that just goes to show one more time that women don't really have to impress men. Oh, but you say they said they'd be impressed by a woman who read Shakespeare? I'm willing to bet the men were just saying that so women would think they read Shakespeare.

By the way, guys, I read news websites. Impressed?