The pro-Biden talking point was the NYT did an investigation and found the Tara Reade allegations to be false.

So it's especially inconvenient that The Editorial Board of the New York Times is saying "Investigate Tara Reade’s Allegations/Americans deserve to know more about a sexual assault accusation against the likely Democratic Party nominee."

Last year, this board advocated strongly for a vigorous inquiry into accusations of sexual misconduct raised against Brett Kavanaugh when he was nominated to a seat on the Supreme Court. Mr. Biden’s pursuit of the presidency requires no less. His campaign, and his party, have a duty to assure the public that the accusations are being taken seriously. The Democratic National Committee should move to investigate the matter swiftly and thoroughly, with the full cooperation of the Biden campaign....

In his statement, Mr. Biden said that if such a document existed, there would be a copy of it in the National Archives, which retains records from what was then the Office of Fair Employment Practices... Later on Friday, after the National Archives said it did not have personnel documents....

Any serious inquiry must include the trove of records from Mr. Biden’s Senate career that he donated to the University of Delaware in 2012..... Any inventory should be strictly limited to information about Ms. Reade and conducted by an unbiased, apolitical panel, put together by the D.N.C. and chosen to foster as much trust in its findings as possible.... No relevant memo should be left unexamined....

There's no mention in the editorial of the way the NYT was used by so many Biden supporters, who claimed that the NYT had done an investigation and absolved Biden.

IN THE COMMENTS: The Editorial Board speaks of "an unbiased, apolitical panel, put together by the D.N.C. and chosen to foster as much trust in its findings as possible," which prompted Roger Sweeny to say: "'Unbiased, apolitical panel' and put together by a political party do not go together."

But, you know, it makes sense to me. Who can believe in such a thing as "an unbiased, apolitical panel" in the first place? They don't arrive from Planet Neutralia. Are you going to find a neutral panel to appoint the neutral panel? Where do you start?! The Editorial Board puts the burden to pick the panel on a political entity with a huge political stake, and sets it up for our political judgement by announcing the standard that must be met: It's supposed to be "an unbiased, apolitical panel... chosen to foster as much trust in its findings as possible." Why would the DNC meet that standard? The reason is stated right there, and it's a political reason: the interest in getting us to trust the outcome.

Now, I wonder who could be chosen who could perform the task. We're told that the Biden archive at the University of Delaware arrived in the form of "nearly 2,000 boxes and more than 400 gigabytes of data" and that "most of it has not been cataloged." The Reade incident is alleged to have occurred in 1993: Was that the gigabytes era or the paper-in-boxes era? Who are the hyper-trustworthy, unbiased and apolitical investigators who can and will handle a project like that and do it quickly enough to work on the election time line? That's the problem I see. How is the DNC supposed to find people like that?!

ADDED: To state the problem is to see the real solution. This "unbiased, apolitical panel" — if anything like it could be convened — cannot get a creditable search done within a satisfying time line. Therefore: Biden needs to withdraw. 

"The traditional voyeuristic peephole in film suggests the person being watched is under threat. The peephole makes the person looking through the peephole into the vulnerable one."

Aaid Catherine Zimmer, author of 'Surveillance Cinema,' quoted in "The Policing of the American Porch/Ring offers a front-door view of a country where millions of Amazon customers use Amazon cameras to watch Amazon contractors deliver Amazon packages" (in the Style section of NYT).

Note that Amazon owns Ring, and people who buy and install these devices are facilitating Amazon's business, which is hurt by the theft of packages left outside customers' houses. Amazon ought to give us the devices free and given an Amazon Prime discount to people who keep them up and running.

It's interesting to see how we balance security and privacy as we accept these devices. Imagine if the government simply required us to accept the installation of the devices and imposed its app on all cell phones. What if the city added $1,000 a year to the property tax on any home that did not maintain a Ring-type surveillance doorbell? Of course, we would scream.

But here we are accepting the thing, because it seems cool, and it's low-priced. (If you want one, please buy it here, so that I get a percentage, since I am an "Amazon Associate" and have — voluntarily!! — linked my fortunes to Amazon.) Since the device is voluntary, those who accept it onto their property feel they are gaining security.

If you, the person inside the house, are peeping out, then, as the film professor says, you have the sense that whoever approaches your house is "the vulnerable one."  The conventions of cinematography say, you are in control, you have the power. That's important... at least some of the time.

Or maybe all of the time if the world has already changed to the point where children don't come up to doors to ask if a child who lives there can come out to play and neighbors stop by to chat.

ADDED: The second part of the quote in the post title is confusing: "The peephole makes the person looking through the peephole into the vulnerable one." I assume Zimmer didn't mean to say 2 different things, and that "the person looking through the peephole" means the person outside of the house who is being watched from inside the house. But taken literally, it seems more like the one who is looking out through the peephole — the homeowner who wanted to do surveillance — has become vulnerable. We'd need some more clever verbiage to sketch out that theory.

The hunter becomes the prey... but how? Did Zimmer intend to call up the old hunter/hunted switcheroo?

That trope has roots as far back as Greek Mythology, where a quite literal hunter, Actaeon, is transformed into a deer by Artemis and eventually torn apart by his own dogs.

The Hunter of Monsters in general lives by this trope in a supernatural context, since monsters, in general, are often portrayed as predators of human beings, and human beings tend not to like being prey....

Zimmer is a film scholar, and this trope appears in many movies — "M... Dr. Mabuse... North by Northwest... To Catch a Thief..." — and we all know the cartoons with the hunter-becomes-the-hunted plot. Here's the classic:



IN THE COMMENTS: Roger Sweeny said:

I think she means that if you are looking through the peephole worrying that someone may be trying to do you wrong, you are feeling vulnerable. You are worrying that something bad could happen to you, caused by the person on the other side of the peephole.

I found that hard to coordinate with the first sentence: "The traditional voyeuristic peephole in film suggests the person being watched is under threat." But Zimmer did say "traditional," so it may be that in the cinematic tradition — such as "Psycho" — the peephole is in a secretive pace, used for spying on someone who thinks no one's watching and gets naked, but with the Ring, the thing is out and proud and the person approaching is outside and expecting to be seen. The person who is in private, inside the house is not seen via the peephole, but that person's sense of vulnerability is manifested by the device. The obvious Ring device isn't a way to sneak a look at someone but to let them know in advance that you're suspicious of them.

For a complete reversal of the peephole, see the "Reverse Peephole" episode of "Seinfeld":



"Newman and I are reversing the peepholes on our door. So you can see in..."/"To prevent an ambush"/"But then anyone can just look in and see you"/"Our policy is, we're comfortable with our bodies. You know, if someone wants to help themselves to an eyeful, well, we say, 'Enjoy the show.'"

AND: Don't forget the great 60s slogan, "Power to the Peephole!"

"Society is in a time of renewed ferment about gender. Culture wars rage..."

"... over bathrooms and even the very notion that men or women have to choose one fixed gender identity. President Donald J. Trump reportedly likes his female staff 'to dress like women'; just what this means isn’t entirely clear. The divide looms between those who welcome the new fluidity and those who yearn for clearly defined gender roles. So designers on the runway this week engaged in a continuing dialogue about how clothing defines masculinity and femininity — and how it scrambles these notions, too."

From a NYT fashion piece by Susan Chira titled "Gender Fluidity on the Runways."

And I see that the 5th photograph is a picture of a Jeremy Scott outfit that I grabbed from a Tom & Lorenzo blog post yesterday and dropped into a text to Meade as I said "This is what you should wear." That one and also this one. I will be wearing this.

IN THE COMMENTS:  Roger Sweeny said: "You will both be surpassingly ugly." Which sent me on a Google search that got me to "How to spot a 'Hippie'" at a blog called Life of an Architect:

Hippies were once a symbol – a youthful subculture that grew out of counter-cultural ideologies of the Beat Generation that embraced psychedelic rock, free love and pot. Now they mostly look like homeless people which isn’t really fair to homeless people. Now that the hippies have all grown up, all I can say is stay away from psychedelic rock, free love and pot (and maybe Whole Foods Market).

Key point: The hippies of the late 60s and early 70s are old people now. The hippie spirit knows and loves the beauty of decrepitude.