Here are 7 TikToks to while away the next few minutes. Let me know what you liked best.

1. Ricky Gourmet goes sugar mode.

2. Whatever happened to the boy who played Charlie in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"?

3. I'm not sure if it's right to do this, but I think all versions of Obama look just great.

4. Spending the night with your irascible Southern grandma.

5. Committing to a "capsule wardrobe."

6. Why do some women knowingly marry gay men?

7. "Fly Me to the Moon."

"Secretaries claimed he was both brilliant and 'cute,' although Michelle Obama was skeptical, writing that white people went 'bonkers' any time you 'put a suit' on a 'half-intelligent black man.'"

"She also thought his picture had a 'whiff of geekiness.' But she was more than impressed after meeting him, by his 'rich, even sexy baritone' and by his 'strange, stirring combination' of serenity and power. 'This strange mix-of-everything-man,' when she finally let him kiss her, set off a 'toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder.'"

From "Michelle Obama rips Trump in new book" (AP).

I chose to focus on something other than the ripping of Trump. Toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder — now, that's amusing! It's hard to picture Michelle Obama toppled. But how is anyone supposed to write in a dignified, appropriate way about the fact that they're sexually excited by the person they married? "Toppling" is as good a word as any, and you say "lust" but in a mix of other more exalted concepts.

I note she used the word "strange" twice — "strange, stirring combination" and "strange mix-of-everything-man."

Anyway, I'm less interested in Michelle Obama's shots at Trump than what she can say about random ordinary white people — like those secretaries — and what she thinks they think of any "half-intelligent black man" that you (who?) "put a suit on." Can't half-intelligent black men put on their own suit? But I like anything half-honest about how it felt to be an accomplished black woman in a Chicago law firm and trying to succeed despite suspicions and whatever real inequities prevailed at the time and looking to meet a man who could make a good-enough match for her. And then getting Obama! That really is strange!

ADDED: I'll just say one thing about the Trump ripping:

She remembers how her body “buzzed with fury” after seeing the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump brags about sexually assaulting women.

Is the book written in — speaking of "ripping" — bodice-ripper prose? We saw above that Michelle was toppled and blasted by a first kiss, and here we see that she experienced the "Access Hollywood" story as a bodily "buzz." Does she grasp things intellectually or do they happen in her body? And isn't that what Trump was really saying when he made that "grab them by the pussy" remark?

When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything... Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.

The stardom itself reaches into the body and readies the woman to receive him — that's what he was saying.  Trump's impudent verbalization of that process angers Michelle Obama, but the way those words worked was to cause her body to "buzz" — as if Trump's voice were a vibrator.

"Are there really a lot of people who find Trump refreshing, who found Obama 'glossily beautiful'?"

Asks Angel-Dyne in the comments to a post where I dropped an aside: "And by the way, maybe Barack Obama was too glossily beautiful and that's how we developed a taste for Trump."

I know the readership here is not a scientific sample, but I can't resist polling:

Did you find Obama beautiful and then develop a taste for Trump?

Yes! Too much glossy beauty gave me a taste for something different.

I never found Obama beautiful, but I do have a taste for Trump.

I found Obama beautiful, but I've never had a taste for Trump.

Both Obama and Trump have suited my taste, the same taste, for a distinctive character.

Obama is sometimes attractive and Trump has his good points, but I don't care in a personal way. Just get the policies right and spare me the showbiz aspect of politics.

pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: Poll results:

What it means to say "He broke me" — the words Kathy Griffin said 3 times and made her cry.

Here's yesterday's post about Griffin's "He broke me." She'd lawyered up, and she'd moved beyond her sincere apology for going too far and wanted all the people who were outraged and attacking her to know that now they'd gone too far, and they had become the bullies. But it shifted from crying out about all the many people who were swarming her, to a focus on the one man, Trump. The key phrase was "He broke me." That one man, he broke her.

If you do a Google image search for "broke me," you'll see something like this:



"Broke me" belongs in melodramatic speech about a love relationship. Where did that visualization of Trump come from? Kathy Griffin never had a love relationship Donald Trump — did she?! — so how could there have been an emotional reservoir from which "He broke me" could spring?

You might argue, it wasn't that kind of "broke me." It was like breaking a horse. She sees herself as a wild, untamed creature — galloping comedy, running free. And Trump tamed her. He got that saddle on her and he's riding her. No. I'm not seeing that.

She was in relationship mode. "He broke me" is of a piece with: I really loved him. But how can that make sense?! It made enough sense for her to stop and listen to herself and say it again and hear herself again and say it once more with overly passionate feeling, like a ham actress in a bad movie. Why?! Where did that come from?

One answer is: We (some of us) are experiencing Donald Trump as our boyfriend. We love him in a romantic way. It's easy to see that we felt like that about Obama. I wrote a post in 2014 about how I already had 54 post with my tag "Obama the Boyfriend." It is something that happens with political leaders, romantic fixation. It was especially strong with Obama, and we could see it and (often) confess to it, because he was outwardly so charming and attractive and we wanted to be seen loving him.

But Trump?! Could Trump's success — his bizarre, how-the-hell-did-that-happen? success — be explained as romantic love? Throughout the campaign season, I know, I always opposed Trump on the sheer merits, but I also observed myself rooting for him. It was absurd, and yet I saw it happening for months. I didn't want him to win, so what was this crazy elation when he did win? I asked myself that question over and over again and observed myself on the heightened scrutiny level of knowing I was doing it and that it was bizarre.

I'm not making a new tag for this. I'll just give it my old tag "Trump derangement syndrome." It's a love/hate relationship.

ADDED:

Obama tags on this blog that have collected a surprising number of posts.

You can see all my Obama tags below the fold. I'll just list some I particularly like for various reasons — odd specificity, surprising usefulness, whatever:

Obama the mood elevator (74)
Obama the boyfriend (58)
Obama and manliness (24)
Obama's psyche (68)
Obama is everywhere (15)
Obama and irony (14)
Obama and pop culture (87)
Obama the father (19)
Obama the teacher (28)
Obama and the fly (13) (Let's see Trump catch a fly with his bare hand.)
Obama eats dog (12)
Obama attacked from the left (11)
Obama gets mad (3)
Obama is bland ( 63)
Obama's tired (5)
Obama is like Bush (78)
Obama is like Carter (15)
Obama is like Nixon (35)
Obama is like Reagan (4)
Obama is like Sarah Palin (4)
Obama's umbrella (5)
Obama says something strange (1)

In Argentina, the state dinner is not a staid dinner. As Barack Obama does the tango with a woman who is not his wife...

.... fortunately, Michelle Obama is doing the tango with a man who is not her husband...



ADDED: Should Obama be dancing the tango after the terrorist attacks in Brussels? Yes. Don't encourage the terrorists. Don't reward them. Don't let them think they can make the President of the United States cancel his plans. Do you want terrorist attacks in response to every presidential plan? Support the President in this, whether you like his politics or not.

Remember:

[T]hey wanted to create an atmosphere of fear. And one of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore public confidence... Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Go down to Disney World in Florida, take your families and enjoy life the way we want it to be enjoyed.

The artist Sarah Sole calls her artistic take on Hillary Clinton "libidinal," distinguishing it from "all of the man-love for Obama" — such as Shepard Fairey's HOPE poster.

Rolling Stone explains.

People like Fairey "would project the most sublime, personable, personal aspirations [onto Obama]. He was pure, he was wonderful, and so of course they're going to be disappointed," Sole says. "I don't do that with Hillary. I like Hillary's impurities."...

Sole explains that the painting, "Red Gun," is a play on a photograph of Natalie Wood that ran in Life magazine in the Fifties. "The gun is the phallic power, it's sexual, but it's not eroticizing violence — it's eroticizing the idea of women with power, phallic power," she says.

To Sole, it's sexy. The sexiness of Hillary Clinton was what drew her in. "I just like her swagger. She's got something very butch about her that I like. Part of the delight of Hillary was that I was attracted to her, physically," she says. "And it was fun playing with that, even if I didn't paint well enough to make her into a beautiful woman."

You can see some of the paintings at the link and lots more of them here. You might like them, even if you're laughing at (or with) her "I didn't paint well enough to make her into a beautiful woman."

Here's what I think is the source material alongside "Red Gun":



I like this idea of taking a photograph of one person and redoing it with another person. There's commentary in the difference between the two.

What did the artist mean by "I didn't paint well enough to make her into a beautiful woman"?

HC is beautiful and I didn't do her justice.

To me, HC has an aura of beauty that I can't figure out how to depict visually.

Only a genius could turn that subject matter into a beautiful woman.

I'm also an artist of the verbal realm, intriguing you with all those variations of meaning.

pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: I think Sole is trying to do something like what Drew Friedman has done so brilliantly. Look at "Warts and All" (and the other Friedman books you'll see at that link). He worked from photographs of celebrities and he sure didn't try to make them beautiful. He leaned into surreal ugliness. Friedman's work appeared in Spy Magazine from 1986 to 1992. When I thought about that I had an a-ha moment:

"There’s 400 headlines now that say 'Paul says vaccines cause mental disorders.' That’s not what I said."

"I said I’ve heard of people who’ve had vaccines and they see a temporal association and they believe that," said Rand Paul.

It just annoys me that I’m being characterized as someone who’s against vaccines.

The annoyed Senator was doing a photo-op, getting a Hepatitis A booster shot in the Capitol physicians office. He's right, by the way, there are lots of headlines saying that he said vaccines cause mental disorders.

I had a number of stories on the phoney-baloney kerfuffle over vaccines I might have clicked on this morning, and I'm going to confess that's the one I chose because I wanted to see the photograph of Rand Paul in his white T-shirt, with his bare arms extended. He's getting the shot in his right arm. (Is he left-handed? Yes, and so were  7 of the last 17 presidents.) Why is his right hand balled up in a fist? I thought you were supposed to relax your arm when you get a shot. Is he trying to make his arm look more muscular for people like me who were going to look at the news report for the ulterior reason of wanting to check out his physique? Will the other candidates give us that close of a look? Let's not forget the extent to which Obama exposed himself:



Obviously, that sort of thing helps. This is not just me with a mental disorder. Bill Clinton knew it and used it....



... used his wife too. Did she make an affirmative, unambiguous, and conscious decision to engage in this mutually agreed-upon activity and was her consent ongoing throughout this behavior?

How many posts on this blog have the "Obama the Boyfriend" tag? 54!

We were just talking about yesterday's "'Obama Courts Women in Campaign Swing' — courts women?! Not men?'" I was saying it's normal to say that a candidate "courts votes" — because he really wants to win the one-and-only vote the person has to give in a particular election — and that easily slips into the sloppier usage "courts voters," but when you slot in a single sex and say "courts women" — as the NYT did yesterday — the original connotation of wooing a lover becomes apparent. You can tell it's there because you know they wouldn't say "courts men."

I said to Meade: "You know, there's a reason I created the 'Obama the Boyfriend' tag. How many times do you think I've used it?" He answered "5." I knew it was a lot more than that, but even I was surprised to see that the answer was: 54. Obama has been sold to us on this theme for a long, long time. The most recent post with the tag before yesterday's was "'You're so handsome that I can't speak properly.' Said to Barack Obama by Gwyneth Paltrow...."

But when did it start? Whose gush first pushed me to create the tag?

Maureen Dowd has boyfriend trouble.

"He was going to be the kind of guy who whipped you up and then, when you were all excited, left you flat, and then, when you were deflated and exasperated and time was running out, ensorcelled you again with some sparkly fairy dust."

Absurd. And so mystifyingly anti-feminist. How did Barack Obama pull voters away from Hillary Clinton in 2008? You'd think that women would have felt a special attachment to the the woman on the verge of being the first woman President. There's a special attachment that is more special than the attachment of woman to woman: the boyfriend. What a deft political move for Obama! It was a fairytale romance.

As our old boyfriend declared — and it takes one to know one — it was "the biggest fairytale" he'd ever seen.

"Obama Courts Women in Campaign Swing" — courts women?! Not men?

That's a headline in The New York Times, and it trips my sexism meter.

They wouldn't say he was "courting men," would they? This reminds me of something Obama himself said the other day: "I shook hands with, hugged, and kissed, not the doctors, but a couple of the nurses...."

To be fair, "to court" doesn't always mean "To pay amorous attention to, seek to gain the affections of, make love to (with a view to marriage), pay addresses to, woo." (OED.) It can also mean "To act as though trying to provoke (something harmful, unpleasant, etc.); to invite unwisely." You see that meaning in phrases like "courting disaster" or "courting death." It's funny to read "courting women" with that as the meaning.

Obama is out in the hinterlands courting disaster women.

ADDED: "There are two main distinctions that make dating different than courting, says Jim Bob. Dating is spending time with someone alone, not necessarily with the end goal of marriage. Not so with courtship, which is carefully monitored and not for the commitment-phobic. 'Courtship is really waiting for the one God has for you and praying through the whole process,' the father of 19 says. 'It’s really examining the person and considering, "'Would this be the guy I want to be the father of my kids?"' says Michelle."

AND: You know, I created the tag "Obama the Boyfriend" for a reason, and I don't put it on a post unless it's deserved. How many posts have that tag? 54!

"You're so handsome that I can't speak properly."

Said to Barack Obama by Gwyneth Paltrow, who also enthused fascistically that "It would be wonderful if we were able to give this man all of the power that he needs to pass the things that he needs to pass."

"And you may find yourself in a beautiful Oval Office..."

And you may find yourself in a beautiful Oval Office... pic.twitter.com/m7N8DDQrZe
— Doktor Zoom (@DoktorZoom) August 28, 2014

From "Twitter Nation distracted by president's suit."

I'm not distracted by the tan suit. I'm distracted by the distraction over the suit.

They say Obama said he had no strategy, but the suit was a strategy.

It's always showtime/Here at the edge of the stage....



Stop making sense, stop making sense, stop making sense, making sense/We've got a boyfriend that's better than that/And nothing is better that this....

"I don't want to put anything on top of that. I don't want to put Obama drinking beer on top of that."

I say, referring to the previous post, a tribute to Barry Goldwater's acceptance speech, 50 years ago today, after Meade emails me a MarketWatch article — "Right and left finally agree: Obama has checked out" — with this photograph:



And Meade says: "Except that it's kind of related."

Joe Biden sends me an email with the subject line: "Alright, Ann."

That seems kind of nasty.

It continues:

If you've been watching what's been going on in Washington lately, then you get why Barack is so eager to get out and spend some time with people like you, Ann.

Alright, Joe, whaddya mean by people like me?

Alright, what does Joe mean by "people like" me?
	The little people, the ordinary people, the plebes and peons.
	The fankids, the adulating idolators, the ladies who feel that Barack is their boyfriend.
	Women huddled in bunkers in the War on Women.
	Lawprofs and other presumably friendly academics.
	Cruelly neutral bloggers who inspect his every move.
pollcode.com free polls

"Bears, beer and horse heads: What exactly is going on with the leader of the free world?"

What exactly is going on with the leader of the free press? That's the first line of a Washington Post story that is the top item on the site's home page. Has WaPo turned against Obama? I'm going to guess no and that this article is actually supportive, but let's check it out:

On a single day this week in Denver, President Obama scarfed down pizza and drinks with strangers, shot pool with Colorado’s governor and shook hands with a guy on the street wearing a horse mask. His top staffers are promoting these stops on Twitter with the hashtag #TheBearIsLoose — a term one of Obama’s aides coined in 2008 when the candidate would defy his schedule....

So... this is easy: Obama is campaigning. It's what he does well, and he wants to be seen in a good light. He wants these photo ops to be used as WaPo mostly uses them: To revive old love and to make journalists decry gridlock in Washington.

But can the Obama-for-President routine play when we've got that children-crossing-the-border crisis? Obama is traveling about, doing political theater, and when he was questioned about his avoidance of the scene near the border, he said: "This is not theater." That is, it's a problem to be solved in a serious way, and that to visit the detention camps would be theater. He's right about that. It's not the kind of theater he wants. He's not denying that pizza-scarfing and horse-mask-guy greeting are theater. So the showman chooses what show to mount. 

The president... seems genuinely impatient with the limitations of his office.

We have limited government. Love it or don't serve in it, conlawprof.

He has started walking around D.C. for short stints, referring to himself in the third person as “the bear” as he walks across Lafayette Park or heads to a nearby Starbucks....

Maybe one morning he'll awaken before 4 a.m and wander down to the Lincoln Memorial to talk with the young people. His chief of staff might write in his diary "I am concerned about his condition" and call it "the weirdest day so far." The President might dictate notes to be shared with "anyone else who may have raised questions": "Even when I'm tired, I do not talk about nonsensical things," and talking with the young people was an effort "to lift them a bit out of the miserable intellectual wasteland in which they now wander."

I hope that (your) hatred of the [what's going on these days], which I could well understand, would not turn into a bitter hatred of our whole system, our country and everything that it stood for. I said that I know probably most of you think I'm an SOB. But I want you to know that I understand just how you feel.

Nah. That was Nixon. The young people don't think Obama's an SOB, and Obama has never had to entertain the slightest notion that the young people think he's an SOB.

"He shook my hand very firm, very sexy. He said today was a beautiful day to be in New York. He’s more handsome in person, very sexy."

Said the lady shopping at the Gap in NYC who got to shake Barack Obama's hand. 

Why was Obama shopping at the Gap in NYC?
	I take him at his word: he was buying clothes for Michelle, Malia, and Sasha.
	It was a photo-op designed to make him seem normal and nice so we'll all like him more.
	This narcissistic man craves affirmation from random ladies.
	He's re-living the joys of being "Obama the Candidate," that well-loved character.
pollcode.com free polls

An occasion for my "Big Government sounds like a creepy stalker" tag.

Email received just now:

From "Change" to "Exchange" — the deflation of Obama elation and how can old enthusiasts find comfort.

Surely, it must be happening, an emergent Obama nostalgia, to take the edge off the dreariness of what the Obama administration has become. There must be those who, seeking solace, are looking back to old comforts like Obama Girl:



Let's close in on that 4th verse:

You’re into border security
Let’s break this border between you and me
Universal healthcare reform
It makes me warm
You tell the truth unlike the right
You can love but you can fight
You can Barack me tonight
I’ve got a crush on Obama

Oh, it's so hard to keep nostalgia pure. Can you watch — and by "you," I mean only those who have loved Obama — and not talk back? Universal healthcare reform/It makes me warm. Yeah, "warm" as in: overheated with anger. You tell the truth unlike the right... Yeah, that's true if you read it the right way. It could mean that all politicians talk at us in a manner that is intended to be received as "truth-telling," that contains elements of truth, exaggeration, and falsehood, and that there are different ways to perform this necessary political activity, and the politicians on the right do it one way, and the way Obama does it is a different way.

Goodbye to Ruth Garland-Dewson, the San Francisco milliner.

"Mrs. Dewson owned a celebrated shop on upper Fillmore Street called Mrs. Dewson's Hats for more than 37 years. Among her customers were former Mayor Willie Brown, Bruce Springsteen, Samuel L. Jackson, B.B. King and Sharon Stone. Brown called her "the milliner to high society." Mrs. Dewson designed a hat for him, which she called the Willie Brown Snap Brim. 'It fit my personality,' Brown wrote in his autobiography, 'Basic Brown."

When I was in San Francisco back in 2007, I had a chance encounter with her. I blogged this:

I was traipsing about San Francisco yesterday, and, snapping dozens of pictures, I made my way over to Fillmore Street for a little window shopping. I saw this...



.. and was struggling against the glare and reflections to frame my shot — and also, idiotically, talking on my iPhone — when a woman — who I now understand to be Ruth Garland-Dewson — swept out of the store and flung herself between me and the picture of Barack Obama.

"Are you trying to take a picture of my man?" she said dramatically.

But she wasn't what I for a second thought she was: one of those shopkeepers who are touchy about having their place photographed. She wanted to come out and talk — about Barack Obama and other things as well. I got off my phone conversation and complimented her on the great shop and asked if she had extra large hats. I love women's hats, but since I need a men's extra-large size, I can never find a woman's hat — aside from something stretchy — that fits. She found me what might have been her largest hat, and it almost fit. You know, I should have bought it! It was ocher-colored with a dark purple spiral — a felt hat with a large brim. I think I would have bought it if she'd tried to talk me into it (as so many sales people have nudged me beyond my initial resistance — it's not very hard).

But she wanted to talk about Barack Obama. Do I like him? Yes! I think he's a good man, and that he would be able to do a lot of good. I added, "But I kind of like Giuliani." That was okay with her, it seemed — so long as I don't like Hillary.

I'm sad to read that she's died, and I'm sorry I didn't buy that hat. She was so sociable and nice to me that day. She seemed like she was ready to launch into a conversation with me just because I was the one person who happened to be around just then.

Can you see the printed text in my photograph, above? That's her line, "I would say, 'Go, Obama, you're black enough for me,'" which ended a letter that she had printed in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 1, 2007, reacting to what was then a hot dispute: whether Obama was "black enough."

"I am as troubled by the use of the word 'woman' to describe the 18-year-old object, briefly, of a 53-year-old’s affections..."

"... as I am by the use of the word 'lover' to describe my 18-year-old self, in the context of that relationship."

Writes the 59-year-old Joyce Maynard on the occasion of a documentary movie about the now-dead J.D. Salinger.

IN THE COMMENTS: T J Sawyer said:

"His was a seduction played out with words and ideas..."

Sounds like Maynard is making a strong case for withdrawing the voting privilege from 18-year-olds. Or at least the distaff portion.

(Do I need to explicitly mention 2008 and 2012?)