"A lot of people have asked me what the exact moment was at the DNC that made me realize I wasn’t on board with the party I’d worked for nearly half of my life."

The truth is, it was everything. The crowd that mindlessly chanted 'joy,' the vasectomy van offering free tacos, the coronation of a candidate with zero policies or platform available, and the final straw: Oprah Winfrey. Her tone deaf lecturing turned me off so much, I left the building, getting an uber straight to my hotel, where I booked a flight home a day early, not even staying for Kamala’s acceptance speech...."

Writes Evan Barker, in "One Year Ago Today I Ruined My Life" (Substack).

"In the past year, nearly all of my old political friends have stopped speaking to me. One of them said: 'fascism doesn’t look good on you'....  I’ve lost friends I’ve known for fifteen years. My toddler stopped getting invited to birthday parties. He was rejected from preschool. We even had to move to a new town."

Adding tags to this post, I had to stop a while to remember what was my tag for the inane nonissue of Kamala's joy. It was "how does Kamala feel." Let me publish this post with that tag so I can click on it and see what that looked like in real time. In retrospect, it looks awful.

"Can you imagine what would happen if politicians started paying for people to endorse them. All hell would break out."

Said Donald Trump, quoted in "Trump demands Kamala Harris, Beyoncé, Oprah be prosecuted over 2024 campaign payouts: 'Totally illegal'" (NY Post).

What about paying them to not denounce you? Wasn't Trump prosecuted for that?

"Did I lie? Yup. Did I also write a book that tore people to shreds? Yeah."

Said James Frey, quoted in "Oprah Shamed Him. He’s Back Anyway. Twenty years after 'A Million Little Pieces' became a national scandal, James Frey is ready for a new audience" (NYT)(free-access link).

As Frey sees it, the public has gotten increasingly comfortable with falsehoods, without getting fully comfortable with him. He finds it all a bit absurd. “I just sit in my castle and giggle,” he said.

I'm using my 3rd free link of the month of June on this because I am a long-time admirer of photographs of the interiors of writers' homes. As I wrote 12 years ago: "I love this book, 'Writer's Desk,' with excellent photographs by Jill Krementz (who was married to Kurt Vonnegut) and an introductory essay by John Updike."

I see Frey has an "extra-large mohair Eames chair, which he had custom-made so that he could sit in lotus pose." I identify. I've been buying chairs that accommodate the lotus position since I first bought furniture, which would have been in the 1970s. I wish I still had the chair I bought at Conran's that got me through law school. I'm one of those people who feel more comfortable with my legs folded up. 

Speaking of things written on this blog long ago, I've been around long enough, doing this low-level writerly thing that I do, to have covered the "Million Little Pieces" foofaraw when Oprah was agonizing:

We'll forget how to agonize about money in politics if it keeps getting spent with such ineffective and hilarious profligacy.

"The Harris campaign paid Oprah $1 million to do that interview, and she spent $100,000 building the set of the Call Her Daddy podcast so Kamala Harris wouldn’t have to fly out to LA to film it."

The Harris campaign paid Oprah $1 million to do that interview, and she spent $100,000 building the set of the Call Her Daddy podcast so Kamala Harris wouldn’t have to fly out to LA to film it. pic.twitter.com/rg0dthCR7c

— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) November 9, 2024

ADDED: "How Kamala Harris plowed through $1 billion" (Washington Examiner).

"And let us choose inclusion over retribution. Let us choose common sense over nonsense...."

"And let us choose the sweet promise of tomorrow over the bitter return to yesterday. We won't go back. We won't be set back, bullied back, kicked back. We're not going back."

Oprah at the DNC:

It's a familiar Democratic Party trope: We go forward and Republicans go back. Back where? I remember when Joe Biden came out with "They're going to put y'all back in chains." So: back to slavery times. Who was that dreaded Republican racist who was "going to put y'all back in chains"? It wasn't that terrible ogre Donald Trump. It was Mitt Romney. 

Lucid.

I'm reading "Without Senators in Sight, Christine Blasey Ford Retells Her Story/Her lucid memoir, 'One Way Back,' describes life before, during and after she testified that Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in high school" (NYT). Excerpt:

Published more than five years after her 2018 congressional testimony, Blasey Ford’s new memoir, “One Way Back,” is an important entry into the public record — a lucid if belated retort to Senator Chuck Grassley’s 414-page, maddening memo on the investigation — but a prosaic one.

 The book is important, lucid, belated, and prosaic, we're told.

They snubbed Oprah and invented a new category to lure in Taylor Swift.

I'm reading "Golden Globes 2024 Nominations: ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ in Front/'Barbie' led the nominations with nine, followed by 'Oppenheimer' with eight. In the television categories, 'Succession' had the most with nine" (NYT).

In one obvious snub, “The Color Purple,” based on the Broadway version of the story and backed by Oprah Winfrey, was left out of the best film, musical or comedy category. In a surprise, voters found a way to invite Taylor Swift to the ceremony, nominating her “Eras Tour” concert film in a new category for blockbusters....

"We lived in total poverty. We were bathing in the lake. Someone would call up and offer him $2,000 to come speak at a university about his books."

"And he would tell them that everything he had to say was there on the page. So we would eat beans for another week."

Said Anne DeLisle, the English pop singer who married Cormac McCarthy in 1966 and lived with him for "nearly 8 years in a dairy barn outside Knoxville."

Quoted in "Cormac McCarthy, Novelist of a Darker America, Is Dead at 89/'All the Pretty Horses,' 'The Road' and 'No Country for Old Men' were among his acclaimed books that explore a bleak world of violence and outsiders" (NYT).

Envisioning the absent Meghan.

By Rachel Tashijian, confabulating in "Kate, our flower crown princess" (WaPo):

The rare moment of pathos was provided by the Ascension Choir, a selection of gospel singers from England, belting “Alleluia (O Clap Your Hands)” and swaying. You could almost see Meghan, whose 2018 wedding to Harry also famously included gospel music, smiling victoriously as the sun began to rise in southern California. (Perhaps she’s even pajama-clad on Oprah’s sofa for a watch party?)

AND: Visions of those who are on the outs but were in there nonetheless (and what they wore): 

Non-working royal Prince Andrew arrived at Westminster Abbey in full regalia while Prince Harry wore a plain suit. Follow live updates: https://t.co/jJaucoQ4tU pic.twitter.com/2JsMTAPtTy

— Yahoo News UK (@YahooNewsUK) May 6, 2023

I've hand-picked 9 things from TikTok for you. Let me know what you like best.

1. Understand the difference between "ask" and "guess" cultures.

2. In a 1-bedroom apartment, the "bedroom" doesn't need to be the bedroom.

3. Just a guy falling. [UPDATE: Link removed because the video is no longer available.]

4. Photographing birds.

5. Your iPhone photo app has a built-in plant identification function.

6. A Southern etiquette lesson. 

7. Here's a way to make a cheeseburger — an insane way, but a way nonetheless.

8. Dolly Parton talks to Oprah Winfrey about losing weight and goes on for 4 full minutes.

9. A cover of "Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall."

"Crews of burglars publicly smashing their way into Los Angeles' most exclusive stores. Robbers following their victims, including..."

"... a star of 'The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' and a BET host, to their residences. And this week, the fatal shooting of 81-year-old Jacqueline Avant, an admired philanthropist and wife of music legend Clarence Avant, in her Beverly Hills home.... 'The fact that this has happened, her being shot and killed in her own home, after giving, sharing, and caring for 81 years has shaken the laws of the Universe,' declared Oprah Winfrey.... 'The world is upside down.'... Some wonder if this could be a turning point for California, which for decades has been at the center of the movement for criminal justice reform, rolling back tough sentencing laws and reducing prison populations.... This has set off alarms among activists who led protests, want to see progressive justice measures enacted and hear echoes of past eras when, they believe, the overhyping of crime led to overpolicing and excessive incarceration. 'They're trying to move us backward,' said Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. 'We don't want to move backward; we want to move forward.... We need to think about what kind of economic desperation actually creates property crime and how do we get people out of that state... How do we create livable wage jobs? How do we create affordable housing?'"

From "Brutal, brazen crimes shake L.A., leaving city at a crossroads" (L.A. Times).

"Set against a pastoral Californian back yard, it at times resembled a play with three characters: a discontented (for good reason) woman, her angry and accommodating husband, and a mediator..."

"... tasked with drawing them out while acting as a stand-in for the curious public. Winfrey... is not just an interviewer but 'something of an emissary, a reactive translator of emotion, a master weaver, pulling disparate revelations into a collective portrait that colonizes the mind.' Some of Winfrey’s lines—like a simple, incredulous 'What?'—were among the most emotionally lucid moments of the broadcast. Of her many successes, this may be what she does best: listen, react, and press a little harder for the truth. As a television performance, it was a role that perhaps no other human being was equipped to play."

From "The Best Performances of 2021/The people who burst through the excess of amusements, onscreen or onstage, and did something extraordinary" (The New Yorker), designating, among the best, "Oprah Winfrey in 'Oprah with Meghan and Harry.'"

"During the interview, Winfrey said she thinks women are going to feel 'liberated' by Adele choosing to leave a marriage that wasn’t working, rather than stick it out only for her child."

"'I’ve read where you said you weren’t miserable, but you also knew you weren’t happy,' Winfrey said. 'And so you wanted to bring a happy version of yourself to your son. Which I think is about the best gift anybody can give to their children.'"

 
From "The four most-personal revelations from Oprah’s interview with Adele, from her divorce to weight loss to new boyfriend" (WaPo).

Make yourself happy, because a happy version of yourself is about the best gift anybody can give to their children.

True

False

It's not that simple!

 

pollcode.com free polls

"Just before the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian ever, began to discuss wrestling with depression and suicidal thoughts."

"Since then, the N.B.A. players DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love and the figure skater Gracie Gold, among other athletes, have gone public to say they grapple with anxiety and depression. Though sports psychologists say a stigma persists about athletes and mental health, and Biles was surely disappointed not to have lived up to enormous Olympic expectations, she was also widely embraced as the latest active, elite athlete who had the courage to acknowledge her vulnerability.... It was not unlike the tennis star Naomi Osaka’s withdrawal from this year’s French Open rather than face what she considered invasive and dispiriting questioning from the news media...."

From "Simone Biles Masters a Star’s New Move: Showing Vulnerability By withdrawing from two Olympic events, Biles joined a growing group of elite athletes who have rejected a long tradition of stoicism" (NYT). 

A new narrative forms around Biles. Will she become a mental health celebrity like Prince Harry and Monica Lewinsky? What grandiose media plans are whirling in Oprah Winfrey's head right now?

The NYT article links to this from May 24th: "Simone Biles Dials Up the Difficulty, ‘Because I Can’/The Olympic gold medalist’s new vault is so dangerous that gymnastics, for now, limits the scoring rewards for trying it. Biles says that’s unfair" (NYT). 

That piece muses that the authorities set a low score on the risky vault because "Biles is so good that she might run away with any competition she enters simply by doing a handful of moves that her rivals cannot, or dare not, attempt." Now, we've seen, Biles herself dares not attempt it.

This was the occasion for the article that came out in May:

.@Simone_Biles successfully completed a Yurchenko double pike in vault at last night's #USClassic.

She is the first woman in HISTORY to perform the move in competition. @OnHerTurf pic.twitter.com/j07ZweTA0f

— #TokyoOlympics (@NBCOlympics) May 23, 2021

Boy George's newest tweet about the Meghan-and-Oprah interview.

Silly but funny! pic.twitter.com/oozoMIQdsg

— Boy George (the truth is in your breath) (@BoyGeorge) March 11, 2021

I'll just quote his previous tweets on the subject, oldest to newest: 

1. "I found the big @oprah interview to be hugely dull. Is there more? I pray not!" 

2. "The one person not mentioned in any of this Harry & Meghan saga is the little boy Archie. If they had left the royals without creating a shit storm (it could have been done easily) he would still be an important future member of our royal family. I hope he still can and will be. I feel neither family deserves applause."

3. "You'd think they would have in house therapists at Buckingham Palace and if they don't, now is the time."

4. Responding to someone who said Harry needed to protect his family from the pararazzi: "You are talking to someone who knows more about the press than you could imagine? Harry, has slagged this country for years, long before Meghan. Fighting the press, then embracing the press because it tells you what you want to hear? It's a mugs game!"

The NYT had multiple reporters doing minute-by-minute commentary on Oprah's 2-hour interview with Meghan and Harry.

Weird that they gave that such prominence. 

Here's how all that stuff is processed into something to read this morning: "A Raw Look Behind Palace Doors as Meghan and Harry Meet With Oprah: Highlights/In a two-hour interview with Oprah Winfrey, Meghan Markle made dramatic disclosures, including that there were 'concerns and conversations about how dark' her son’s skin might be." 

Excerpt: 

Despite his life of privilege, Harry said, he felt trapped and “didn’t see a way out.” 

“Without question she saved me,” he said. 

Harry alluded to strained relations with his father, Prince Charles, and his older brother, Prince William, both of whom he also described as “trapped” in their roles.

Did Oprah ask them if they watch "The Crown"? I bet they do.

Bill Maher complains about being criticized as a "bad person" for saying that fat people need to take responsibility for the health problem they, in fact, have.

Here's the image from 1988 of Oprah, newly thin and openly leading a celebration of herself for the achievement. Maher and Rogan say you can't do that today. It would be socially unacceptable fat-shaming.

The singer Adele recently lost a lot of weight, and Maher and Rogan talk about how people are actually criticizing her for quitting serving as a role model for people who want to feel good about being fat.

Oprah Magazine instructs its readers on the proper reaction to Adele's weight loss: "On Adele’s Weight Loss: Let's Stop Criticizing Her Body, No Matter How She Looks/Why can't we focus on how happy she looks on the beach, instead of how she looks on the beach?"

At a time when body positivity is (finally) being more widely celebrated, some folks are apparently disappointed that she changed what many women saw as a valuable representation of their own plus-size figures.... The core of the [body positivity] movement stands behind the radical idea that your worth has nothing to do with the size of your body.... So who are we to criticize Adele’s frame...? Her body belongs to her—not us.

Maher was repeating a point he'd made a while back on his show — that 40,000 people a month die from fat-related illness and that it's not about how people look but the terrible health problem. He talks about the criticism he took from James Corden, and I found this background in Variety:

Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” joked about obesity on his show last week, saying “Fat isn’t a birth defect” and “Nobody comes out of the womb needing to buy two seats on the airplane.” He advocated: “Fat-shaming doesn’t need to end, it needs to make a comeback.”...

In the podcast, Maher claims that he didn't make any jokes about fatness! Obviously, he did, even if he also has a serious purpose.

“There’s a common and insulting misconception that fat people are stupid and lazy, and we’re not,” Corden said. “We get it, we know. We know that being overweight isn’t good for us and I’ve struggled my entire life trying to manage my weight and I suck at it. I’ve had good days and bad months. I’ve basically been off and on diets since as long as I can remember and, well, this is how it’s going...".

Now that I'm reading this, I think Maher, in the podcast, is quite dishonest about his own statements and Corden's. Maher may have something of a good point about the costs of fat-related health problems in a system in which we're all more or less paying for each other's health care, but he's not doing straight health policy analysis. In fact, if you did hard-nosed, truth-telling policy analysis, you wouldn't stress the 40,000-a-month death toll. Early deaths save money.

ADDED: Here's the "Real Time" routine that I think Maher was dishonest about:

"I am an independent woman. I've earned the right to think for myself and to vote for myself, and that's why I am a registered independent."

Said Oprah Winfrey, rallying for Stacey Abrams in Georgia.

I was wondering what size crowd Oprah drew. I'm seeing that all available tickets were claimed and that the event was Forbes Arena at Morehouse College, which has a capacity of 6,000. That doesn't mean there were 6,000 people there. In the video, there's a black curtain behind Oprah, so I'm thinking there were unused seats behind the curtain. The audience does sound very enthusiastic. Anyway, I'm interested in the way crowd size is reported/unreported, now that Trump has set such an insanely high standard for political rallies. I would think that if anyone on the Democratic (independent?) side could draw the same kind of crowd, it would be Oprah.

IN THE COMMENTS: Big Mike said:

Correction. She was born with the right to think for herself and to vote for herself as a citizen of the United States. One can thoughtlessly relinquish those rights, but they are our absolute birthright.

I am sure Oprah would agree that all Americans have this right, so to me, the interesting question is why Oprah said "earned." It seems wrong, because it suggests that less successful, accomplished Americans do not have this right. The trick is in the word "right." If she'd said "power," it would make sense.

I think it goes something like this: Oprah had to struggle to get to the place where she can think for herself and vote independently. She didn't mean to imply that other people are not entitled to think and to vote in their own independent way. It's that some of them haven't got in touch with their power to exercise their rights. You need to develop as a person — and it takes work — to get where you see, value, and use your rights.

Another way to look at it is that Americans should not be complacent about rights. Rights come and go and change over time. If we don't work to see, value, and use them, they can get lost. We're losing and gaining all the time, and if you haven't noticed, you're part of the problem. Don't get too comfortable. You may think you were born with an immense fortune in rights, but don't loll around like a pettish heiress.

You know that feeling? — when you wake up and look at the clock and think, oh, good, it's late enough to get up...

... even though it's only 4:30 a.m., but at least it's not 3:30 a.m. Now that would be too early. But 4:30 — early, but okay. It's fine to get up. You've had enough sleep. It's good to get up early. And blah blah blah. Thoughts thoughts thoughts. You're fully awake now. There's no going back. And then you realize: Daylight Savings Time. The phone-clock sprang ahead on its own while you were sleeping. It was 3:30 (essentially). And that is far from the worst mistake I've caught myself in this morning. I did something else so stupid that I'm not even going to blog about it.

IN THE COMMENTS: Of course, people are prodding me to say what was the "something else so stupid," but I notice that Trump — in his rally last night — said he'd love to run (in 2020) against Oprah, because he knows "her weakness." He spoke of her weakness many times, but he never said what it was. I don't know if he — like me — has a very specific thing that he knows for sure, but what a fabulous rhetorical device. If you fall for it, you've got to think about all of the possible weaknesses of Oprah — brainstorm a big list, frame everything about Oprah as a weakness. She's warm and easily able to perform empathy in the presence of almost anyone. Bzzztt. Weakness!!! Your thinking about it like that is far more effective than his (or my) naming that one thing.

"You take no shit. None. Not a bit. In your 40s you want to say you take no shit, but you still do."

"In your 60s you take none. There’s both a quickening and a calming—there’s a sense that you don’t have as much time on earth as you once did. For me, there’s also a sense of calming about that."

Said Oprah, about being in her 60s.

I'm sure I'll get a Google AdSense "Dear Publisher" letter informing me of "recent activity related to violations found on specific pages of [my] websites" because I've got the word "shit" in a post title. But Oprah said it. Oprah said it. And I'm in my 60s and I am taking no shit.

I got offered that shit — but didn't take it — when I blogged about "shithole." But the President of the United States said it. The President of the fucking United States. Or so I'd heard.

UPDATE: From my email just now: