Chelsea Clinton, speaking in Madison to an audience of "a few hundred," said children are getting bullied in school because of the "Trump effect."

We're told — by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Jason Stein — that Chelsea "gave examples" of this "Trump effect" bullying that she attributed to what she called "an almost daily diet of hate speech" coming from Trump.

I could have walked down the street and joined what Stein calls "a young crowd of supporters... at the upscale Overture Center for the Arts." But I chose not to. I'm just a little lazy at night. And the World Series was on. And frankly, I don't like seeing famous people. It feels creepy. Like that waiter playing the role of waiter that we were just talking about.

Anyway, speaking of bullying, I should link to Scott Adams's post yesterday calling the Democrats "The Bully Party":

If you have a Trump sign in your lawn, they will steal it.

If you have a Trump bumper sticker, they will deface your car.

[I]f you speak of Trump at work you could get fired.

On social media, almost every message I get from a Clinton supporter is a bullying type of message. They insult. They try to shame. They label. And obviously they threaten my livelihood.

We know from Project Veritas that Clinton supporters tried to incite violence at Trump rallies. The media downplays it.

We also know Clinton’s side hired paid trolls to bully online. You don’t hear much about that....

Joe Biden said he wanted to take Trump behind the bleachers and beat him up. No one on Clinton’s side disavowed that call to violence because, I assume, they consider it justified hyperbole.

Team Clinton has succeeded in perpetuating one of the greatest evils I have seen in my lifetime. Her side has branded Trump supporters (40%+ of voters) as Nazis, sexists, homophobes, racists, and a few other fighting words. Their argument is built on confirmation bias and persuasion....

One way to bully is to call the other person the bully. Chelsea could be said to be part of that activity.

And as far as that "almost daily diet of hate speech" Chelsea spoke of — where does it come from? Does it come from Trump or does it come from Trump's opponents who are paraphrasing him? I think most of the noise comes from the paraphrasers, and the question is whether they are: 1. Interpreting Trump accurately and getting us to see dog-whistling for what it really is, or 2. Distorting what Trump says into something it's not that they want you to think it is.

Whatever the paraphrasers are doing, they are relying on 2 important beliefs: 1. Listeners hate the idea that the paraphrasers are making so clear, and 2. The hard-core daily beating rained down on Trump will never turn him into a sympathetic character.

That first belief might not be true or not true enough. At some point, on some level, listeners might feel, instead of aversion to Trump, fears and needs that send them into Trump's arms. And that second belief is dangerous: These ham-handed attacks are so crude and exaggerated that they exceed the crudeness usually attributed to Trump. We're told to hate crude brutality by people who look increasingly crude and brutal.

UPDATE: Just this morning a man with a pickax and a sledgehammer, wrecked the Donald Trump star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

"We Built Way Too Many Cultural Institutions During the Good Years."

Did we? And who are "we"? "We" are all those cities across America who think we can be Bilbao, that if we build it, they will come.

Per capita, the biggest total spenders on cultural projects during this period were Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the San Francisco/Oakland/Fremont region of California, Appleton and Madison, Wisconsin, and Lawrence, Kansas....

We seemed to buy into that Richard Florida/"Rise of the Creative Class" theory "that if we have cultural amenities, we’ll have better, more creative populations."

The biggest arts building boom in fact occurred in the South, a potential sign of cities there trying to catch up with the rest of the country. 

Look! We're not as backward as you think!

"These projects are very much emotional, they’re projects that have a lot of passion in them.... A lot of the rationality that goes into running a business sometimes doesn’t go into these projects."

Hey! That's a nice summary of the problem of letting government do anything.

It's intermission.

You can talk about anything you want.

It's intermission.

You can talk about anything you want.

At the Overture Café...

... you can tune up.

A grand performance of the national anthem in Madison... and a complaint about it.

Jessica Courtier in the Capitol Times, describing the program that opened the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s new season:

Forgoing the usual celebratory fanfare, the program opened with John Adams’ On the Transmigration of Souls, a piece premiered a year after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Drawing its texts from the missing-person posters that populated New York immediately after the terror attacks, the piece is filled with recorded speaking voices and live singing....

The piece closed as it opened, with recordings of the most quotidian of street sounds, and the audience held a space of contemplative silence, as conductor John DeMain had requested before starting.

I’m going to say something here that will no doubt get me hot water: I am disappointed that, at this point in the concert, DeMain chose to insert a rousing rendition of the national anthem.

Where the Adams composition creates a space for personal reflection and tenderly holds the names of people who perished, the anthem demands a particular feeling. Surely the sense of nation was implied in the Adams piece and need not have been followed by sounds so linked to politics.

Meade and I attended last night's performance, and if the audience objected to the national anthem, you could not tell. Playing the anthem has been a tradition and omitting it because of the 9/11 remembrance is, presumably, even in Madison, almost unthinkable. And the orchestra, augmented by the choir, produced real thrills, especially when they hit the high note — with descant — on "free."

"In a major turnabout, Madison and Overture Center representatives are now discussing private — rather than city — ownership of the arts facility as part of a path to erase Overture's $28.6 million debt."

Well, well, well. The climate changes. Even here in Madison, Wisconsin:

City Council President Mark Clear on Wednesday sent a memo to council colleagues saying he now believes the city should not acquire Overture and that Overture representatives are willing to consider private ownership of the $205 million building.

That's a huge shift from a June 22 deal among Overture officials, banks and donors to eliminate the $28.6 million debt — including $15 million pledged by donors — which required that the city buy the arts center on State Street for $1 by year's end.

The Overture Center...



... is an over-expensive, over-glamorous monument to the over-sized opinion elite Madisonians have of themselves... and of the humble citizens' appetite for The Arts.

I have never understood how the immense, ultra-glamorous Overture Center fit Madison.

Now, there are huge financial problems, and big cut-backs have been announced. I know these are economic hard times, but how was this immense architectural monument ever deemed viable in our small city? I often wander in there, looking for something to buy tickets to, and the offerings are nowhere near commensurate with the ambitious size of the place. So, they're cutting back jobs and shows, but they can't shrink the building -- which never seemed to offer more than we were already getting at the much smaller arts center we already had.

Here's the PDF of the announcement.

The approved budget includes deep cuts to administrative costs....

Overture Center leadership will host a series of ‘‘community conversations’’ at various places around Dane County through the spring, inviting people to share their thoughts regarding Overture Center’s future.

You know what that means. They want us taxpayers to pay for the insane hubris that made them take over an entire city block and build it up with extra theaters and giant expanses of glass and marble.

Intermission at the Overture Center.

Outside, there's a mist. The state capitol is enveloped in fog.



Inside, they've projected snowflakes on the wall:



On the night of the solstice, we're reminded of the cold depths that we are not experiencing. But we're here for the concert. It's the intermission, and we're milling around:



We're all here...



To see... Who are we all here to see? What singer would -- just by walking onto the stage -- make your humble diva blogress break down and cry?

It's Judy Collins.