"I’ve been on their list for a long time. That’s what we’re dealing with. The only thing is, I’ve left instructions — if anything happens, to just literally bomb them at levels that they’ve never seen before."

Said President Trump, quoted in "Trump tells The Post he’s ‘left instructions’ should Iran assassinate him: 'Bomb them at levels' never seen before" (NY Post).

That's dramatic and colorful, but when he is dead, he will not be the President, and his "instructions" will be nothing more than an expression of a preference.

He seems to want it to work like the "doomsday machine."

"After an uncredited part as a masseuse in the Peter Sellers comedy 'What’s New Pussycat?' (1965), written by Mr. Allen, and a voice-over in 'What’s Up, Tiger Lily?' (1966), Mr. Allen’s directorial debut..."

"... Ms. Lasser had full-fledged roles — with character names and screen time — in Mr. Allen’s next three auteur efforts, which he wrote, directed and starred in. In 'Take the Money and Run' (1969), she was a bank robber’s neighbor, impressed by his fame. In 'Bananas' (1971), she was the hero’s activist girlfriend who drops him because he shows no political leadership skills. The next year, in 'Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask),' she played a woman who could achieve orgasm only in public. In the middle of all that filmmaking, in 1970, the Allens divorced...."

From "Louise Lasser, Star of TV’s ‘Mary Hartman,’ Is Dead at 87/She began her screen career in Woody Allen movies (he was also her husband), but she was best known for her portrayal of the Ohio housewife in the pigtails and puffed sleeves" (NYT).

"A character doesn't know if they're in a comedy or a drama. They're just living their life, right?"

"And so if funny things happen around this character, then the movie or the show is a comedy. But if it's tragic or scary or whatever, it leans towards drama. Sometimes it's a mixture of both. But I think if you can tell a character knows they're in a comedy, it's intrinsically less funny. I like somebody like Alan Arkin or Peter Sellers—they always seem very true to their characters. You couldn't tell whether Alan Arkin was doing something intensely dramatic or something crazily funny. He'd play different characters but he was equally committed to both of them and never letting on. He was never winking like, 'I'm in a comedy. Here we go. Watch this joke. You're going to laugh.'"

"The threat to democracy — indeed, the existential threat to democracy — is the unelected bureaucracy of lifetime, tenured civil servants..."

"... who believe they answer to no one, who believe they can do whatever they want without consequence, who believe they can set their own agenda no matter what Americans vote for. So, Americans vote for radical FBI reform, and FBI agents say they don’t want to change. Or Americans vote for radical reform in our energy policies, but EPA bureaucrats say they don’t want to change. Or Americans vote to end DEI — racist DEI policies, and lawyers in the Department of Justice say they don’t want to change. What President Trump is doing is he is removing federal bureaucrats who are defying democracy by failing to implement his lawful orders, which are the will of the whole American people."

Said Stephen Miller, at yesterday's press briefing.

Want to see a murder?

Libs in the White House press corps screamed at Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller that Elon Musk is “unelected!”

What happens next is a fatality.

I promise you - this is the single best video on the internet today:pic.twitter.com/Nxcw0qTtj1

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 20, 2025

ADDED: In the same vein, here's Victor Davis Hanson:

 

"Are we just alternating between weird and normal — perceptions of weird and normal? If so, then 2024 is Trump's turn again."

That's the last line of a post I wrote on May 23, 2023 — "DeSantis uses Warren G. Harding's word, 'normalcy': 'We must return normalcy to our communities.'"

That was back when DeSantis was endeavoring to replace Trump by being essentially Trump minus the weirdness. Yes, there was talk of weird-versus-normal just like there is today. I said:

I myself am hungry for normality, but I don't trust people who keep saying "normal." I always think of Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty in "Lolita" — "It's great to see a normal face, 'cause I'm a normal guy. Be great for two normal guys to get together and talk about world events, in a normal way...."

"[A]t a virtual gathering of the National Guard Association of the United States, a group he addressed while speaking against a backdrop of American flags, with a flag pin affixed to his suit lapel," Biden asserted "I’ll never use the military as a prop."

"I promise you, as president, I’ll never put you in the middle of politics, or personal vendettas. I’ll never use the military as a prop or as a private militia to violate rights of fellow citizens. That’s not law and order. You don’t deserve that."

Quoted in "Biden, Speaking to National Guard Group, Takes Aim at Republican Criticism on Crime/The Democratic presidential nominee hit back at attacks delivered at the Republican National Convention" (NYT).

Some day, I hope there will be movies on big screens with an audience full of living breathing human beings. I hope to sit amongst the fortunate people of the future one day. I hope to gaze upon a dramatization of the 2020 campaign for President of the United States. I hope the scene described is in the movie, and the line is used verbatim. I see us all laughing quite heartily.

What a line! It's almost on the level of "Gentlemen! You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"



Using the military as a prop, Joe Biden said "I’ll never use the military as a prop." That's rich.

In the middle of politics, Biden promised this military group, "I’ll never put you in the middle of politics."

Expressing his personal vendetta against President Trump, Biden told the group "I’ll never put you in the middle of... personal vendettas."

"You don’t deserve that," he observed, giving them exactly what he's saying they don't deserve.

"McDonald's has made the decision to stop selling milkshakes when there's a Brexit rally nearby... Burger King U.K. came under fire after tweeting, 'Dear people of Scotland. We're selling milkshakes all weekend. Have fun.'"

From "Throwing milkshakes as a political statement makes a splash in Britain" (CBS News).

Is the entire cup thrown at the person or just the contents? I'm not sure, but this "milkshaking" seems to be the same activity as pie-throwing (where, usually, it's shaving cream in a pie tin, smashed into a person's face). I guess for milkshaking you don't need to get as close, and it's easy to buy your loaded weapon in a fast-food joint. In the UK, there's debate about whether this should actually be called "violence," but obviously it is.

Wikipedia has an entry for "milkshaking":

Milkshaking is a term that refers to the use of milkshakes and other drinks as a means of political protest in a manner similar to egging.

Well, with egging, the hard shell is always part of the projectile, and you've got to hit hard enough to break the egg.

The target of a milkshaking is usually covered in a milkshake that is thrown from a cup or bottle.

Usually... so perhaps sometimes the cup is also thrown.

The trend gained popularity in the United Kingdom in May 2019 during the European Parliament election and was used primarily against right-wing and far-right politicians and activists, such as Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage, Carl Benjamin, and members of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and Brexit Party.

Robinson was the first one to be milkshaked, and when he got milkshaked the next day, he punched the person who did it.

In American slang, "milkshake," used as a noun, refers to a woman's body "and the way she carries it." Urban Dictionary has various entries for "milkshake," the verb, going back to 2005, including the idea of throwing a milkshake at someone, from 2013. That doesn't have the political-theater angle, just a mindless prank, done from a moving car, aimed at a random pedestrian. The British activity is also there, entered 2 days ago.

And here's the rather extensive Wikipedia article on pie throwing. Excerpt:

The probable originator of pieing as a political act was Thomas King Forcade, the founder of High Times magazine. In 1970, Forcade pied Otto N. Larsen, the Chairman of the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography; his action was called the first Yippie pieing[.] Aron Kay, also a Yippie, went on to take up Forcade's pieing tactics. Kay pied, among many others, William F. Buckley, Phyllis Schlafly, G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, and Andy Warhol....

Though pieing may not have been a political protest before 1970, pieing appeared — almost appeared — in the great 1964 film "Dr. Strangelove," and the context was distinctly political:

But for a last-minute change of Kubrick’s heart, the moment of reckoning was to be preceded with a riotous battle with pastries from the War Room buffet table. The fight, which was shot but cut out before the final print, begins with Soviet Ambassador de Sadeski (Peter Bull) responding to the threat of a strip search by hurling a custard pie at US general Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott), which misses and hits the American president.

“Gentlemen,” rallies Turgidson, holding his wounded leader (Peter Sellers) in his arms, “our beloved president has been infamously struck down by a pie in the prime of his life! Are we going to let that happen? Massive retaliation!” Chaos ensues in fast-motion, in a manner recalling the silent slapstick of Mack Sennett and the Keystone Cops....

"Eventually, Strangelove fires off a gun and shouts ‘Ve must stop zis childish game! Zere is Verk to do!’ The other characters sit around on the floor and play with custard cream like children building sandcastles. ‘I think their minds must have snepped from the strain,’ Strangelove announces."

Pie throwing goes way back — to stage shows and silent movies. The first is the 1909 film "Mr. Flip." There are many many pie-in-face bits in the movies but (judging from the Wikipedia article) the ultimate was this 2-minute sequence from "The Battle of the Century" (1927) with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy:



Stop! Stop! This has gone far enough! Love thy neighbor!

Andrew Yang (the Democratic presidential candidate) talks about "normal" so much....

... it reminds my son John of that fake police officer played by Peter Sellers in Stanley Kubrick's "Lolita":

I said to myself when I saw you — I said, "That's a guy with the most normal-looking face I ever saw in my life!" . . . It's great to see a normal face, because I'm a normal guy. It'd be great for two normal guys like us to get together and talk about world events — you know, in a normal sort of way....

At the link: the "Lolita" clip and Yang's "normal" quotes.

"You go not just where it’s comfortable but where it’s uncomfortable. And to me that means being there."

Being There! I saw that movie.



The quote in the post title is from Amy Klobuchar, interviewed by The New Yorker about "How Democrats Can Defeat Trump in 2020."

I'm the person who once said, "Why aren't the Democratic candidates better? I'm just going to be for Amy Klobuchar," so I guess I have to read this, even though I expect it to be boring. (I've often said I like elected officials to be boring, but that doesn't mean I want to consume their boring words, and I'm also wary that a boring candidate will not make it to the position of elected official.)

Let me put the quote in context. Unboringly enough, the context is Insect Inferno.

Klobuchar was asked how she (in getting reelected Senator) was able to speak to Trump voters. She says "you have to show up," and she visits all 87 counties in Minnesota every year:

One time I found myself in a business called Insect Inferno because we had run out of places to visit. It was near the Canadian border, a Trump county, and I was in this truck, and it said, on the outside of it, “Insect Inferno: we kill bedbugs with heat,” and the whole concept was they would drive around and you put mattresses in them and then they’d put the temperature up to three hundred degrees. So when I was in there they put it up to only a hundred. But, again, I thought to myself, You go not just where it’s comfortable but where it’s uncomfortable. And to me that means being there....

Insect Inferno?! Have you ever heard of insect politics?



Later in the interview (after some grilling — mild grilling — about the Kavanaugh hearings), Klobuchar is asked , "On a scale of one to ten, where are you in terms of running for 2020?" Her answer:

Well, as I have said before, I am considering it, but I never rate, scale things. So I’m not going there, but I have been talking to people in my state and people around the country about it. I think that there are a lot of good people considering this, but I do think you want voices from the Midwest....

The interviewer (Susan B. Glasser) observes that the 2016 election was determined by the voters of the Midwest, and Klobuchar — quite unboringly — comes out with an anecdote and a metaphor:

But I do think, on the Midwestern front, my husband is the third of six kids, and his mom, they grew up in a trailer home and... they would go out on vacation. And oftentimes when they came out of the gas station she would have them each count off to make sure they were all in the car, because my husband was always the sweet, quiet one, and she was afraid he would be left at the gas station. And the Midwest was left at the gas station, and we’re not going to let that happen again. And I think that is more than a metaphor just for the Midwest. It was a lot of middle-class voters, it was a lot of citizens that felt that they weren’t getting a fair shake in the system, that they were, like, having to ration their insulin, like a kid that died, a Minnesota restaurant manager recently was doing, they weren’t feeling like they were treated right. And I think our party and whoever is our nominee has to be able to respond to those people in a way that we weren’t doing in that last election.

"Princess Margaret finally dropped [Peter] Sellers after... Sellers had already married and divorced a third wife, Miranda Quarry, and had become too volatile..."

"... to remain an acceptable royal escort; in the middle of a row with Quarry over the correct way to pass the port, he had let off steam by releasing all her pet birds from their cages and hitting them around the room with a tennis racquet."

From "Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret" by Craig Brown. I'm enjoying this book but it's disturbing my comfortable appreciation of Peter Sellers.

"Today's featured picture" (at Wikipedia): The Homemade Brownie.

"This is an image of a chocolate brownie/Ɱ - Own work." Creative Commons license.

The Wikipedia main page always has a "featured picture" of the day.

I love the stark iconic quality of that picture, which appears at the top of the article "Chocolate brownie," identified as a homemade brownie (in contrast to — ugh! — "Store-bought brownies"). From the article:

One legend about the creation of brownies is that of Bertha Palmer, a prominent Chicago socialite whose husband owned the Palmer House Hotel. In 1893 Palmer asked a pastry chef for a dessert suitable for ladies attending the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. She requested a cake-like confection smaller than a piece of cake that could be included in boxed lunches. The result was the Palmer House Brownie with walnuts and an apricot glaze...

The first-known printed use of the word "brownie" to describe a dessert appeared in the 1896 version of the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Farmer, in reference to molasses cakes baked individually in tin molds.

The Oxford English Dictionary has something earlier...

1883 J. Edge-Partington Random Rot vii. 312 Each with a huge hunch of ‘browny’ (bread sweetened with brown sugar and currants) in one hand.

... but that's a different food item, coming from Australia and New Zealand. The American "small square of rich, usually chocolate, cake containing nuts" is traced back only to 1897:

1897 Sears, Roebuck Catal. No. 104. 17/3 Fancy Crackers, Biscuits, Etc... Brownies, in 1 lb. papers.
1954 J. Steinbeck Sweet Thursday xii. 80 Do you like brownies?
1968 L. J. Braun Cat who turned on & Off (1969) x. 96 On her tray were chocolate brownies..frosted chocolate squares topped with walnut halves.

Cat who turned on & Off... is that about hash brownies? Here's the book. I don't think it is. But if you are interested in hash brownies, Wikipedia deals with that topic in the article "Cannabis edibles":

Modern interest in edible cannabis is credited to the publication of The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. Toklas included a recipe for "Haschich Fudge" which was contributed by artist and friend Brion Gysin when it was published in 1954. Although it was omitted from the first American editions, Toklas' name and her "brownies" became synonymous with cannabis in the growing 1960s counterculture.

Hence the movie title "I Love You Alice B. Toklas." Highly recommended. That's the second time today I wrote an unintentional marijuana pun. And I am not looking for marijuana stories.



So 1968.

"This is when I knew he’s a true Republican."

Said Shirley MacLaine about Clint Eastwood:

"Quite brilliant, and funny… because he’s so laconic and doesn’t know it. I adore him… I remember when we were doing Two Mules for Sister Sara, his horse was acting up. This is when I knew he’s a true Republican: He got off the horse, looked at the horse, and socked him."

I ran into that today because — as noted earlier — we just watched "Being There." I was looking for more material about the character MacLaine played in that movie. Did "Eve" really love Chance the gardener? Not only is the answer yes, but Chance loved her, I think, because MacLaine says: 

"Two years [after I made 'Being There'], I’m at a restaurant and [producer] Dick Zanuck walks up to me and says, ‘What’s it like to have a love affair with Peter Sellers?’ I said, ‘He’s not my type, and I didn’t. What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘I would go into Peter’s dressing room, and he would be on the phone with you doing sex talk.’ I tried to put all this together… It was Dick who figured out, ‘Listen, he became Chauncey Gardner, he was in love with the character you played, and if he had interrupted it with a lunch or dinner, the whole illusion had been shattered.’”

"As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden."

We just re-watched "Being There":



Did we watch "Being There" now, because of Trump? Did "Being There" amaze and distress us with its continued relevance because of Trump?

Actually, not at all. Peter Sellers's character — Chance/Chauncey Gardiner — was just about the complete opposite of Donald Trump. Chance was a man who seemed to come out of nowhere and to make statements about gardens that other people perceived as brilliant political metaphor — "the most refreshing and optimistic statements I've heard in a very, very long time." His lack of any known background counted as a plus to the rich insiders who got the idea of advancing him to the presidency: "A man's past cripples him. His background turns into a swamp and invites scrutiny."

That's much closer to the story of Barack Obama than Donald Trump.

Trump has been so well known for so long. He had a huge weight of past baggage, and it didn't cripple him. He had that "swamp" of a background that invited scrutiny, but he made it anyway. He didn't make it because rich insiders chose him to serve their interests. He was the rich insider himself, and the other rich insiders were the opposite of delighted by his communication style. Trump didn't make simple abstract statements that worked because voters projected their own hopes onto him. He blabbed endlessly about all sorts of concrete problems and played upon our fears and our sense of loss at least as much as optimism.

(You can buy "Being There" at Amazon.)

"I've got it: Nothing. It's about nothing."

We will make a film about nothing:



You see the significance?

Not to be confused with: "What's the show about?"/"It's about nothing." The "Seinfeld" episode "The Pitch" was originally broadcast in September 1992. Over 20 years ago. I know, old. But the film clip above, is from 1966. The movie is "After the Fox" (or "Caccia alla volpe"), with Peter Sellers as The Fox, a master of crime and disguise, who is pretending to be the film director Federico Fabrizi (presumably Federico Fellini). That's Victor Mature as the Marcello Mastroianni-type actor. The director is Vittorio De Sica, oddly enough, and Neil Simon wrote the screenplay.

I was really looking for another clip from "After the Fox," where Sellers is directing Mature in another scene in the criminal scheme he's convinced everyone is a real movie. It's a dream sequence, and Sellers is importuning Mature — in an Italian accent — with "You are running... running!"

I was thinking of that line because "You are running... running!" is my title for this little movie I just made. Check it out:

"On no account will a Commie ever drink water, and not without good reason."

Best answer to the question why Paul Ryan — and not Biden (or Obama or Romney) — drank water during the debate. I had 5 suggested answers in my poll:



But the commenters — both in my post here and over at the poll site — came up with some funny answers:

"Hey — you think you're the only one playing a drinking-game during that debate!?"

"Drinking water helped him keep his cool and avoid beating the shit out of that smug asshole Biden."

"Heat generated by combination of Biden's gusty pizza cheese-smelling sighs and the dazzling white-hot glare from Biden's fake chompers led to increased need for hydration."

"Possibly he had come across Enoch Powell's 'Full Bladder technique.' Powell was a British politician of fifty years ago, famous, inter alia, for being a brilliant public speaker. He always made his speeches on a full bladder, on the theory that it helped concentrate the mind."

"Actually, it was a specially devised clear liquid CHEAT SHEET full of rethuglican LIES!!!"

And thanks as well to those who said things like:

Thanks for posting this, Ann. I've long felt that Instapundit was a bit too heavy on links to relevant and/or interesting content.

Wow. That's some hard hitting insightful analysis there, Ann.

I say thanks because it's helpful to me to remember that there's a segment of the population that doesn't get fun. I assume my readers are fun-loving, but there are some people who are essentially fun deaf, and things like this are as annoying as Joe Biden guffawing while Paul Ryan is talking about nuclear war in the Middle East.

Perhaps for some people, the sorrows and travails of this world are so weighty that we ought to demand a somber demeanor at all times — not just from ourselves, but from others. I can imagine a religion that requires grim facial and verbal expression at all times and for everyone, forever. An eternal funeral. After all: People are dying, dying at the rate of one per second. Wipe that smile off your face. Permanently.

Okay. I just wanted to acknowledge that you of the Religion of Grim are out there. And now, why don't you just take it easy, and please make me a drink of grain alcohol and rainwater, and help yourself to whatever you'd like?

Goodbye to Chatsworth Osborne Jr.

The comically irritating rich kid on my all-time favorite sitcom "Dobie Gillis" was played by an actor named Steve Franken, who has died, at the age of 80. The original rich jerk on the show was Milton Armitage, played by Warren Beatty, but he left the show early and Chatsworth stepped in to be totally unlikeable and ridiculous.

I wish I could find a good clip of him as Chatsworth on YouTube. But here's Franken playing a drunken waiter in the 1968 movie "The Party" (with Peter Sellers). It's not a silent movie, but Franken's role is silent (and very funny).

"The other day I gave her mash and fishfingers for dinner — something quite boring — and her response was 'That’s impressive,' so she has a sense of humor, too."

An English dad describes the experience of living with a 4-year-old genius. 

ADDED: Confession: I had to Google to make sure "mash" referred to potatoes. The process of doing blog tags confronted me with the part of my brain — of whatever size IQ, I don't know — that has been dealing with English food. Long ago, "mash" got mushed with "mushy peas," and I'd never had the push to straighten that out until just now. But, thanks to Wikipedia, I've set my head straight. "Mash" is just mashed potatoes. And "bangers and mash" — which sounds dirty — is just sausages and mashed potatoes, which I think are "impressive."

The term "bangers" is attributed to the fact that sausages, particularly the kind made during World War II under rationing, were made with water so they were more likely to explode under high heat if not cooked carefully; modern sausages do not have this attribute.

Wikipedia kindly includes some pop culture references, including Peter Sellers singing to Sophia Loren, about how he's unsatisfied with her "macaroni" and would like her to "give us a bash at the bangers and mash me mother used to make," which you can listen to on one of those YouTube videos where all you look at is the record spinning. Sellers and Loren do their best to exclude any double entendre that those lyrics may seem to convey in writing.

There's also a Radiohead number called "Bangers + Mash," which has lyrics that begin "You bit me, bit me, bit me, ow," which is something Peter Sellers never sang to Sophia Loren.

Times change, which reminds me of my favorite "banger" song: "Lieutenant Custard & His Banger of Time," which involves a time-travel sausage. Please be careful with this!

"Fans aren't shy about approaching him in public, often assuming he and his crass 'Curb [Your Enthusiasm]' alter ego are the same person."

"'Oh, I get Leon all day long,' Mr. Smoove said. Passersby on the street often call out his character's lewd catchphrases."

Ha ha. Which lewd catchphrase do you think they're calling out to him? You won't find out reading this Wall Street Journal profile of JB Smoove (AKA Jerry Brooks), which has stuff like this...

He started studying comedy in earnest in high school. "I loved Peter Sellers," he recalled. "I thought he was the perfect mix of physical comedy with out-of-the-box humor. I loved his tone, I loved his physicality, I loved everything about what he was doing as a comedic actor."

... but you might hear some of those catchphrases here:

"If Brett Favre's penis could talk, what would it say?"... well, Bill Maher made it say something about Sarah Palin.

I laughed and yelled at Bill Maher when I heard this:



I'm sure that, being a political comedian, Maher is perfectly happy that he was capable of generating, alternately, anger and mirth. And good for him for making himself relevant again. I actually love comedy riffs that go to weird stream-of-consciousness places and connect things outrageously, especially when the comedian is hitting the hot buttons of people who don't have an easygoing and big sense of humor. Maher does all that. Of course, he falls way short of the ultimate comedy hero — Lenny Bruce* — because he's not challenging people in his own audience. In fact, he's stroking those people and encouraging a desire they already have: to laugh at someone they want to marginalize.

And by "someone" there, I mean Sarah Palin, not Brett Favre. No one needs much help laughing at Favre at this point. Just tell us what he did and stop and wait for the laughs. Maher's main comedy idea was to connect Favre's sext to Sarah Palin:

To me this story really isn't about sports or sex or how necessary caller ID is. It's about how pathetic and clueless white American males have become because the kind of guy who thinks there are women out there who just cold want to see your cock is the same kind of guy who thinks Sarah Palin is swell and tax cuts pay for themselves....

And if Brett Favre's penis could talk, what would it say? Well, other than no photos please, I think it would say, I'm not a witch. I'm you. Because for hundreds of years, white penises were America. White penises found America. They made the rules and they called the shots, in the workplace, in the home and at the ballot box. But now the unthinkable is happening. White penises are becoming the minority. 2010 was the first year in which more minority babies were born than white babies. This is what conservatives are really upset about. 

And this is what lefties are really upset about: American history is the story of greedy white pricks who need to be cut down.

That the president is black, and the Secretary of State is a woman, and every shortstop is Latino, and every daytime talk show host is a lesbian. And suddenly this country is way off track and needs some serious restoring. 

He's working the old meme about the Tea Party that distracted liberals in 2009. But it's 2010, the election is breathing down your neck, and tarring the Tea Party as angry racists did not work.

If penises could cry, and I believe they can...

That made me laugh, even though he'd lost me with the trite evil white man stuff.

... then white penises are crying all over America. And that's where this crew comes in. The lovely MILFs of the new rank. And their little secret is that their popularity comes exclusively from white men. Look at the polling. Minorities hate them. Women hate them. Only white men like them. 

The only truth I'm hearing ring in that — and I haven't looked at the polling — is that liberals (quite rightly) loathe the strong, attractive women who have emerged on the right. And minorities and women have for many years tended to go for the Democrats. So those minorities and women, polled, will say they oppose Palin. But some minorities and plenty of women lean toward conservatism. If they feel repelled by conservative women like Sarah Palin, wouldn't that be evidence of sexism? By contrast, the white males who love Palin should for being open to women stepping up to political power. If these men only saw the women as sexual beings, they would tear down the political aspirations. They would scoff at and mock them... the way Bill Maher does. I think Maher was aware of that flaw in his comic rant. Here's how he tries to flip it the way he wants to go:

I'm no psychiatrist but I do own a couch. 

This is a concession that he thinks women exist for sexual purposes.

And my theory is that these women represent something those men miss dearly: the traditional idiot housewife.

Maybe you have that theory because that's what you want in a woman. The housewife is a woman who stays home, and conceptualizing women as idiots is something men do when they want to block their aspirations outside of the home. This is what Maher is trying to do to Palin and the other conservative women. How can he pin that mindset on the men who support the women's ascension to power? No one wants an idiot to represent them in government.

Yes, we vote for idiots all the time, but it's because we project our hopes onto them and imagine them to be, in fact, brilliant:



________

*Here's Dustin Hoffman acting out the most striking example of Bruce challenging his own audience. Very offensive language.

Putting the last 2 posts together makes me think about a Beatles song.

It's one of my least favorite Beatles songs, but Ringo's a good guy, and it's one that he managed to write. He says:

I wrote Octopus's Garden in Sardinia.

(And he wrote "Sardine's Garden" in Octopussia.)

Peter Sellers had lent us his yacht and we went out for the day... I stayed out on deck with [the captain] and we talked about octopuses. He told me that they hang out in their caves and they go around the seabed finding shiny stones and tin cans and bottles to put in front of their cave like a garden. I thought this was fabulous, because at the time I just wanted to be under the sea too. A couple of tokes later with the guitar - and we had Octopus's Garden!

Ah! Peter Sellers. I was just watching a Peter Seller's movie last night: "The World of Henry Orient." Recommended. Do a triple feature of movies in which 2 girls get together and things get crazy and show it along with "Ghost World" and "Heavenly Creatures." Or make a double feature with another Peter Seller's movie from the same era, "I Love You, Alice B. Toklas" (especially if you disapprove of Ringo's toking):