Trump wore a lapel pin depicting himself.

Questioned about it, he said "Somebody gave me this. Do you know what that is? That's called a 'Happy Trump.' And considering the fact that I'm never happy—I'm never satisfied. I will never be satisfied until we make America great again. But we're getting pretty close, I'll tell you what. This is called a Happy Trump. Somebody gave it to me. I put it on."

 

And that's that. Somebody gave it to him and he put it on. Wore it on camera. I wonder what other things people could get him to pin onto himself just by giving it to him. He could be pranked so easily. But I suspect that he exercises some judgment about what to pin on himself. 

And who attaches an image of himself to himself/herself?

It happens, mostly entertainment celebrities in T-shirts.

"The whole night, down to Rihanna’s eloquent performance of 'Lift Me Up' from 'Wakanda Forever,' felt well oiled but entirely preprogrammed because, of course, it was."

 What?! Everyone seemed drunk? I might have watched if I'd known that.

Hey, WaPo, "well oiled" means drunk. If you don't mean literally that oil, the lubricant, was used, you have to get "machine" in there — something like The show worked like a well-oiled machine — if you want to say it functioned effectively. 

I'm reading "It was a lovely, back-to-basics Oscar night. Sorry about that. At Sunday’s 95th Academy Awards, a focus on the winners, not the drama" (WaPo).

Yes, the Oscars took place last night. The thing that we'd be hearing criticism of if it didn't happen happened, so there's no way to know what motivated the Academy, and I just don't care anymore.

I don't know if Rihanna somehow injected "eloquence" into "Lift Me Up," but I read the lyrics, and they're the opposite of eloquent:

Burning in a hopeless dream

Hold me when you go to sleep
Keep me in the warmth of your love
When you depart, keep me safe
Safe and sound

But that nonsense did not win. This won: 

Translated lyrics here. Like the shrill voice of a bird that can ring your ears... Like singing a song that can make your fingers snap to the beat....

Terry Bradshaw is trending on Twitter because, apparently, he repeatedly referred to the fatness of Andy Reid.

Terry Bradshaw’s intrusive thoughts on their way to tell him to call Andy Reid fat multiple times during the post game interview pic.twitter.com/NZXWy1VSbb

— 🥶❄️TheNotoriousNeer🏂☃️ (@Notorious_Neer) February 13, 2023

I selected that tweet in case you'd also — or rather — talk about the halftime show. What were those puffed-up dancers supposed to represent? Rihanna's pregnancy? The UFO/balloon? Snowmen? Polar teddy bears?

I only half-watched the halftime show. I'm sensitive to vicarious acrophobia — basophobia, really — and I thought the sound quality was so bad that that the music could only be "heard" by those who already had the music implanted in their head. 

What, exactly, was the worse thing Bradshaw said? I think it was — directly to Reid, after the game was won — "Big guy. Let me get the big guy in here. C'mon, waddle over here." 

IN THE COMMENTS: Jim puts it more graphically: "The puffed up dancers represented her spouse’s semen. She in her red outfit represented her ovum. This was clearly a biology lesson."

"I could have stood and studied one of those chasubles forever. The passion of our Lord — magnificent!” said Cardinal Timothy Dolan at the Met Gala...

... where the theme was "fashion and the Catholic imagination" and the setting was the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with its new exhibit of Vatican treasures. I'm reading the report in the NYT. So this year, the big gala had mixed celibates 'n' celebrities. The usual fashion-oriented celebrities were on hand — George and Amal Clooney, Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen, Madonna, Rihanna, etc. etc. — and they were tasked to dress up according to the theme "the Catholic imagination." A "chasuable" is the fanciest layer of the classic priestly get-up, and you can just imagine what counts as Metropolitan-Museum-worthy from the Vatican collection.

The Times got the Cardinal to comment on the Catholic-imagination clothing on the celebrities. He happened to say, "That I want to look at more closely," which I think he probably meant as I have been concentrating on the museum treasures and don't have anything to say yet about what these live people have on, but it came out — at least in this article — sounding like he was planning to gape at the live fleshly bodies on display. As if what's really going on in his Catholic imagination is that other passion — sexual passion. Magnificent!

Here's a series of 61 photos of the celebrities at the gala, in case you want to see how they interpreted "the Catholic imagination." Rihanna has a bejeweled bishop's mitre on her head. Lots of the ladies had headpieces that look like the stylized halo in a medieval icon. Katy Perry wore huge angel wings that insured that no one could stand next to her. Kim Kardashian had crosses on her body-as-a-chalice dress. Kanye approved of his wife:

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/yEYJP7qrvf

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) May 8, 2018

What's more Catholic-imagination than 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥?

"A hat is a celebration of oneself. It is about presenting one’s most adorned, spit-shined, upright self to God, social media or, in this case, the history books."

Writes Robin Givhan (at WaPo) about the hat Melania wore yesterday at the greeting ceremony for French President Macron. These days, hats are not "about fashion," but "more of an affectation, whether it be the religiosity of Sunday church service or the self-conscious flamboyance of the Kentucky Derby."

The hat was a "magnificent halo of pure white light perched atop first lady Melania Trump’s perfectly groomed head."

Nothing else mattered. There was nothing else.

That hat, broad-brimmed with a high, blocked crown, announced the first lady’s presence as boldly and theatrically as a brigade of trumpeters. It was the bright white hat of a gladiator worn on an overcast day, a kind of glamorous public shield when sunglasses would not do at all. That hat was a force field that kept folks, the wrong folks, from getting too close.

It was a diva crown. A grand gesture of independence. A church hat. The Lord is my shepherd. Deliver us from evil. Amen.

So, I'm seeing 3 things the hat does: 1. Showing off (yay, me, trumpets!!!), 2. Creating a religious aura (looks like a halo, like a lady in church), and 3. Keeping everyone away (force field!).

As to #3, the first thing I think of is the kissing. I saw Macron and Trump kissing. This was the greeting ceremony. Was none of that cheek kissing to be aimed at Melania?

But Givhan emphasizes independence from Trump: "A grand gesture of independence." And she combines #2 and #3 by continuing: "A church hat. The Lord is my shepherd. Deliver us from evil. Amen."

Remember, according to Givhan, the hat says everything: "Nothing else mattered. There was nothing else."

Silent, stoic, statuesque Melania cries out to the Lord. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death — the White House, with my satanic president-husband — I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.



ADDED: Of course, hats were huge in Trump's campaign. No one ever made as much headway through a hat as Trump. And when Hillary wore a hat, Rihanna wore a picture of it — Hillary + hat — on a T-shirt. And Hillary very famously wore a hat — a big blue hat (presaging a blue dress?) — at the first Bill Clinton inauguration.

ALSO: Is that first line quoted in the post title an intentional reference to Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself"?

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

But Melania could not have felt at ease on the grass at that tree-planting ceremony (where Brigitte Macron grasped Trump's shovel shaft). She along with Madame Macron was wearing stilettos. In order not to sink completely into the sod and get stuck, they were both tasked to walk and stand entirely on their toes.

"As far as rihanna (who isn’t a citizen, and can’t vote) and all the rest of the celebrities who are using their influence to stir the public, you lot really REALLY need to shut up and sit down."

"Stop chastising the president. It’s stupid and pathetic to watch. All of these confused people confuse other confused people. Hoping the president fails is like getting on an airplane and hoping the pilot crashes. What makes you think, the the USA is going to enter the Middle East destroy a bunch of shit and pull out without any real repercussions ????"

Celebrities pushing back celebrities. That's Azealia Banks.

We'll see how things work out for Banks. So far....

Apparently in response to Banks’ rant, [Rihanna] shared a black-and-white photo of herself with the caption, “the face you make when you a immigrant #stayawayfromthechickens #iheartnuggets #saveourhens.” The hashtags are likely in reference to Banks’ controversial video where she showed herself cleaning up what she claimed was blood from years of sacrificing chickens in her closet. She claimed the sacrifices were part of her practice as a witch.

Banks promptly shared a screenshot of the star’s post — which she curiously decided to “like” on Instagram — and said, “What rihanna meant was ….”

What's at that ellipsis is too ugly to put on this blog. I don't picture Banks winning this fight. 

The creepy spectacle of Hollywood actors laughing in their laughing-because-a-comedian-is-telling-jokes style while Chris Rock tells his you're-all-racists jokes.

Oh, they are actors! They're always acting, so sitting there in the fanciest costumes, playing stars at a gala event elevating and celebrating what their character believes is a very grand enterprise, they laughed on cue, presenting faces that seemed to understand what the joke was, but not to the point where they realize that the man on the stage — he's an actor too — is accusing them of participation in evil. Their character is a bit dumb and obtuse, or so earnest about making this gala night beautiful that she pretends not to know that this man is telling them all — in the nicest possible way, under the circumstances — that this enterprise of theirs is thoroughly infected with racism — not lynch-you-from-a-tree racism, not cross-burning-racism, but we'll-always-hold-you-at-arm's-length racism, "sorority" racism, we-like-you-but-you’re-not-a-Kappa racism.

They had to sit there. They'd gotten the role and they were lucky to have it. The evening was, perhaps, a success. Was it? The spectacle felt so awful to me, especially the faces of the actors laughing. What else could they do? Me, I was sitting at home, so I could just turn it off, which I did, after I found myself, one too many times, talking to the TV, saying things like "Look at them laughing as if these are just the usual jokes and the jokes aren't about them and telling them that they are disgusting" and "They're supposed to be demonstrating to us how wonderful they are, and Chris Rock is appropriating the event for something I don't need to watch. But what choice did he have?" and "If they're disgusting, they're disgusting, and why am I watching disgusting people chuckling inanely? This isn't the gala event it's supposed to be."

And now here's Rock saying "Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna's panties. I wasn't invited." He's calling out Hollywood for racism. How can that work if he doesn't take the higher ground? Here he is gratuitously bringing in the name of a woman, referring not to her as a person, but to her undergarments, for a laugh not about racism, but all of a sudden about sexual intercourse, as if tonight's not the night to concern ourselves with sexism. Rihanna is the human being who's name was chosen to fit that analogy. Why? The joke is written so we'll get it. Rihanna was chosen because we're expected to recognize her as the person Chris Rock would want to have sex with. It's as clear an example of making a woman a sex object as you're going to find. Not only do we get it — because we understand the woman to be sex — but she's not even a woman, she's her panties.

And this is a role given to Rihanna because she was black. As with so many other parts in Hollywood, the role goes to the black person because it's a role that's written for a black person. Rock chose not to complicate the joke with a racial crosscurrent a black man wanting sex with a white woman. A black woman was needed for this cameo appearance — used to insult another black woman (Jada Pinkett) — and that was it for her. 

"I think she was a bit of a hero," said Rihanna about Rachel Dolezal...

"... because she kind of flipped on society a little bit. Is it such a horrible thing that she pretended to be black? Black is a great thing, and I think she legit changed people’s perspective a bit and woke people up.”

IN THE COMMENTS: Marty Keller said: "Name one."

For some reason that caused this song to play in my head: "You're only pretty as you feel/Only pretty as you feel inside..."

"Brass knuckles, also sometimes called knuckles, knucks, brass knucks, knucklebusters, or knuckledusters, are weapons used in hand-to-hand combat."

So begins the Wikipedia article on brass knuckles, which is illustrated by this picture of the brass knuckles that were carried by Abraham Lincoln's bodyguards:



I got there because I was googling "who uses brass knuckles" after reading this news story about San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver, who "was arrested Friday after he allegedly struck a bicyclist, attempted to flee the scene and then threatened a witness with brass knuckles after he was cornered." What sort of person, out driving, finding himself suddenly confronted, would have brass knuckles immediately at hand?

"The man whose lips Rihanna ruthlessly mocked on the Internet — in front of nearly 12 million people — doesn't think it's racist..."

"... in fact, he's HAPPY she compared his mouth to a leather couch."

Artist seems to think he invented the image of a woman with snakes for hair, accuses Damien Hirst of plagiarism for depicting Rihanna as Medusa.

"It's always fun to take a pop at Hirst, but... the charge against Hirst is not plagiarism – it is sheer artistic ordinariness."

Neither he nor [Jim] Starr have added anything original to the image of Medusa. The GQ cover is as insipid as some late Victorian mythic erotica. Compared with the great Medusas of the classical and baroque ages, Rihanna with snaky hair is just plain dull.

What everyone wore at the Grammys, beginning with a man in shorts...

... tight gold plastic short shorts — panties really, almost Spanx, don't you think? He's carrying Lady Gaga inside a prop left over from "This Is Spinal Tap."

More tight shiny men's pants at #25 (Ricky Martin). Justin Bieber also models the comically male, spoofing adulthood, I think, doing bagginess instead of tightness, at #36. Katy Perry, at #40, seems to be spoofing the old mishap of unwittingly dragging toilet paper with you out of the bathroom. Rihanna, at #47, seems to have collected all that toilet paper and crimped it into millions of tiny ruffles to band around her body in stripes — alternating with — apparently! —nakedness.

It's the Grammys. It's perfectly apt to dress as a joke.

"Marooned flood victims looking to escape grab the side bars of a hovering Army helicopter..."

A harrowing photograph.

ADDED: The link goes to the first picture in a slide show of the week's photographs. Check out #20 too.  Rihanna strikes a pose.

"Tiger's only choice is to skirt gender equity and opt for chivalry."

(I love the use of the verb "skirt" here!)

Hanna Rosin explains — as I alluded to yesterday — that Tiger Woods must refrain from telling the story of his wife's attack on him — if that's what happened — because, under Florida law, the police would have to arrest her.

Glenn Reynolds takes Rosin to task for minimizing domestic violence perpetrated by women:

Rosin ... writes: “It is impossible to imagine Tiger occupying the same cultural brain space as Rihanna, with Nordegren playing Chris Brown. If Tiger had been chasing down his wife with a golf club and she had shown up with bruises, even if she had cheated with, say, K-fed, we would be a lot less ambivalent and complacent.” That’s probably correct, for certain values of the word “we,” but why is that, exactly? Cheating men deserve to be beaten, even with weapons, while cheating women do not?

Or could it be, you know, sexism? But that’s not possible, because Hanna Rosin can’t be sexist, and neither can those who agree with her. If you’re Hanna Rosin, “sexist” is a name you call other people. You know, bad people who believe in stereotypes and stuff.

Maybe it's "impossible to imagine" if you are someone who thinks women are weak and men are strong: The poor women, if she struck out, it was probably because the powerful male intimidated her, and even if she was violent, she probably didn't intimidate him. Of course, that template is sexist too.