"Can you think of any reason why the neck was severed if that baby was not born alive?"

The prosecutor takes a different perspective on what Kermit Gosnell's lawyer had asked the medical examiner: "Based on the totality of the evidence... you cannot testify to anyone that this fetus was born alive?"

Also: "Former employees testified last week that Dr. Gosnell gave different explanations for why he kept up to 30 specimen jars containing fetal feet." What were the explanations? Some special reason for keeping the feet? Fetus feet... feetus... a sick pun?

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian said:

Serial killers often like to keep "trophies" from their victims.

Ruth Anne Adams said:

You must know that a strong pro-life symbol is the thing called "Precious Feet." I bet Gosnell knew that, too. 

Dr Weevil said:

Yes, a lot of prolifers wear lapel or dress pins depicting the soles of unborn babies' feet. The point is that they are utterly and obviously human even when the baby is only a few months along. The friend of a friend I first saw wearing this said that they're actual size, too, which is part of the point. (I forget what number of weeks they were actual size for: I'm sure anyone interested could find out.)

I'm sure Ruth Anne is right: Gosnell kept the feet of his victims rather than some other body part as a sick sick joke aimed at prolifers.

"Althouse: If you could write your 'How Obama Lost Me' post in the next 24 hours, the race could come down to your influence!"

Writes Ruth Anne Adams in the comments to the "last 72 hours" post. She adds "But if you're going the way of Colin Powell not so much" and "But if you could at least reveal your voting preference in the next few hours, that could win a wager or seven."

I think she's misremembering what the "lost me" posts of the past were about. I started blogging in 2004, a presidential election year, and, after much coverage of the election, including a commitment to something I called "cruel neutrality," on September 26th, I wrote a post called "How Kerry lost me." This wasn't me explaining why I was going to vote against Kerry. It was me acknowledging how I felt and realizing that I could mine the blog archive to discover where that feeling came from.

Yet I find myself expressing an increasing amount of hostility to Kerry, so I thought I'd go back and trace the arc of my antagonism through my various posts.

It was a bloggy project, solving a mystery about myself by taking advantage of the archive. For example, I found the wellspring of my antagonism in a single remark: "You're not listening" (said to a man who asked him what his position on Iraq was, as if the man had simply failed to pay attention to some supposedly previously stated position, when I too had been waiting for Kerry to answer that question). And I found what was, to me, "his final, fatal mistake" (disrespecting Allawi!), which prompted me to write the "lost me" post.

In 2008, I wrote "How McCain lost me," which may have created the impression that "lost me" posts are an Althouse blog tradition. That post was written after the election, but — I said at the time — "it's the same in that I'm mining my blog archive to try to understand how my resistance to the candidate formed and hardened and caused me to vote for the other man."

I know that I voted against McCain. Up through August, I genuinely didn't know which candidate I'd vote for, but I knew I was taking more shots at Obama and therefore giving the impression that I favored McCain. I didn't trust Obama, and I feared (and still fear) what Obama would do with a Democratic Congress. McCain was a more familiar character, less fun to write about, and he was also the underdog. But by mid-October, I knew that unless something big happened, I would vote for Obama. It was nothing new that Obama did. I didn't start liking him more, and I never got caught up in the Obama lovefest.

It was a lot of work to mine that archive. Oddly, despite all that work, my commenters have accused me for the last 4 years of having fallen for Obama delusions. But the point of the work was not to drum anything into your head. It was, as it had been in 2004, an effort to see where my decision happened. That's what I'm interested in: How people think, where, in the emotional/reasoning mind of an individual, does a decision take place? The blog archive gave me the ability to examine that. What I wrote in the "lost me" posts of the last 2 elections was not anything like a newspaper's endorsement of a candidate or an argument designed to persuade anyone to agree with me. It has more to do with my professional interest in how judges make decisions: How does the human mind work?

Why haven't I done a "lost me" post this time around? I haven't had the experience of noticing that there is a mystery that I could solve by delving into old blog posts. As you can see in that last indented paragraph, above, I didn't trust Obama, and I feared what he would do with a Democratic Congress. We all saw what he did with a Democratic Congress. He let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have their way with him. It was horrible. It led to the Tea Party and the trouncing Democrats took in 2010. I've felt no connection to the Democratic Party since then. Of course, I don't like half of what the Republicans stand for, but I've still voted for some of them, notably Ron Johnson and (twice!) Scott Walker, because... what choice do I have? The Democrats have been leading us into financial ruin.

If I could have been assured that the GOP would control both houses of Congress, I might have thought Obama would be good. I like balance, moderation, and pragmatism. If one of the hardcore righties had won the Republican nomination, I would probably have gone for Obama. But Mitt Romney got the nomination, which is what I had been hoping for (after Mitch Daniels decided not to run). It was time to pay attention again to Obama The Candidate, and his campaign centered on vilifying Mitt Romney in the most inane Occupy-Wall-Street style that was completely alienating to me. Romney seamlessly transitioned from being my choice in the primaries to being my presumptive choice for President. I remained open to Obama. Obama could have won me.

Then came Benghazi, and a door closed.

The Needles Vlog.

I'm not needling you. I'm thanking you.

It's up to 882.

Come on! We can hit 1000!

Thanks to all the many commenters who hung out with me for the VP debate live-blog, some of whom are still hanging out there, trying to drive the comments into the 4 figures for the first time. There's some great stuff inside -- I front-paged some of it -- on-topic and off-... off-topic and off-color. There's the funny, and there's the search for a better, more Cuban, recipe for creole shrimp... and I'm sure we'll all find what we're looking for.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ruth Anne Adams said...

Why don't you sweeten the pot? Why don't you promise to vlog an egg salad sandwich or burned pasta or creole shrimp or something when we hit 1000?

I know! A pork-and-crap sandwich!

I'll do a vlog when it hits 1000, so give me some more ideas here. I don't really see why it should involve abasing myself however!

UPDATE: Whoa! We hit 1000!

Live-blogging the VP debate.

7:31, Central Time: I'm here, eating strozzapreti with burned tomato sauce, counting the last few minutes before the grand showdown.

7:39: Strozzapreti? "Priest choker"!

7:55: Are you going to watch on CNN, with the uncommitted viewers' reaction lines undulating at the bottom of the screen? Wow. That's crazy! I can't tolerate that distraction, and the "persuadable" voters they've assembled are... not people I feel like monitoring on a real-time basis.

7:58: What are you looking for, mainly? Honestly, I'm mainly looking to see if Sarah Palin can sound reasonably competent.

8:02: The 2 candidates stride out, both dressed in black. "Hey, can I call you Joe?" we hear Sarah say. Palin looks tiny behind her lectern. She's behind her lectern there, and here's where I am, chez Althouse:



8:06: Palin's flag pin is way bigger than Biden's. Biden has a brown dot on his forehead. Palin refers to "the fundamental" of our economy. She's speaking too quickly, sounding nervous.

8:09: Whose fault is the sub-prime mortgage meltdown? Palin says the moneylenders have taken advantage of people, and she mentions "hockey moms" a second time. Biden blames Republican deregulation. Biden's forehead wrinkles only way over on the side, while the whole center is smooth and flat. What do you think? Botox?

8:13: Palin says she might not answer the questions the way the monitor wants, but she's going to talk straight to the American people. She reveals her overarching strategy. And I note that she's speaking clearly and confidently. There is no stumbling or fear, as far as I can see.

8:19: Joe Biden is going to "eliminate those wasteful spending."

8:27: I'll bet a lot of people are tuning out about now, satisfied that Palin is competent and smart, but pretty bored.

8:29: I'm reading Andrew Sullivan: "Biden is just dreadful. He speaks in Washingtonese. She just issues the soundbites and wrinkles her eyes and tells stories. And that works. The speed and chirpiness she delivers overwhelms one's ability to even quite absorb what she's saying. And it has put Biden off-stride. It's Biden who seems over-crammed." It seems to me that both of them are spewing policy (and it's getting tiresome). "Chirpiness"... I don't know, Andrew... that reads as sexist to me. Why is she overwhelming your ability to absorb what she's saying? Is she working some voodoo on you... and on Biden?

8:34: Palin said "Senator O'Biden."

8:35: Palin razzes Biden on clean coal. Is he for it or not? Biden says he's for it, and his rope-line comment was about his support for exporting clean coal technology to China. That doesn't seem to fit the text of his remark (which he claims was "taken out of context").

8:37: Biden passionately expresses support for equal treatment for same-sex couples, and Palin opposes same-sex marriage, but says that in all other ways she's completely tolerant of adults forming their own relationships. Biden then is given the opportunity to disavow gay marriage, which he eagerly does. Okaaaay.

8:40: Palin is praising the surge and insisting on victory in Iraq. "It would be a travesty if we quit now." Biden complains that she didn't state a plan. On the split screen, when Biden is speaking, Palin looks like she's brimming with ideas she's just waiting to express. When she gets her turn, she says Biden's plan is a "white flag of surrender." She reminds Biden of how much he supported McCain and how he said Obama was not ready to be President.

8:49: Biden is mugging and scratching his neck in an exaggerated way. I think he was trying to signal his objection to the things Palin was saying about Obama's willingness to sit down with Ahmadinejad.

8:51: Biden's heating up! Is he losing his temper?

8:55: At Drudge:



8:57: Well, let me ask:

Who's winning?
	Palin.
	Biden.
	It's not about winning and losing in the debate.
	Shut up! It's not over.
pollcode.com free polls

9:03: Palin enthuses over her Washington outsider status as she claims to hear Biden saying, essentially, I was for it before I was against it.

9:09: "Palin: 'Oh, man, it's so obvious that I'm a Washington outsider and just not used to the way you guys operate!' And then, Biden pats down his brow. On sheer theatrics, Palin definitely won that moment." LOL. That's Jac (my son), who's also live-blogging.

9:11: "There you go again. Say it ain't so, Joe." Palin was waiting to say that. Biden's error? Linking McCain to Bush. Palin seems supercharged. The question is education, and she's praising teachers and winking at her dad in the audience.

9:13: Palin gets a big laugh saying that she and Biden made "lame jokes" back in the beginning of the debate when they avoided answering the question what they wanted to do as VP. Clearly, she's really relaxed. The end is in sight, and she knows she's done well. She's stood her ground next to Biden. She hasn't stumbled, and he's seemed a bit boring.

9:25: Asked what he's changed his opinion about, Biden says he came to realize that judicial ideology matters. (Which is why he opposed Bork.) Palin says she's never had to compromise.

9:29: We've reached the prepared closing statements. So Palin has survived... more than survived. She won, I think most people will say. Now, she's able to say she likes to do these unscripted things. She quotes Ronald Reagan (again) and mentions "freedom" (again and again).

9:31: Biden gives his closing statement. He seems like a nice man. Did he ever attack her?

9:34: Huge crowd of family on the stage.

9:36: The final poll:

It's over now, so who won?
	Biden
	Palin
	Neither
pollcode.com free polls

POST-DEBATE: Let me highlight some comments. Stupe said...

Althouse can't just eat normal foods, she needs trendy.

She doesn't go to chain restaurants, and her cuisine needs to reflect her offbeat, edgy, urbane, t[r]endy life.

Is burning the sauce now a trend? Or do I create the trend? If so, I can't help but be trendy. Is there a strozzapreti trend? I just picked the pasta that had a shape that appealed to me. So just be yourself, Stupe, and believe it's all very trendy, and that might make you happy. Don't think about me. Or, hell, think about me until it drives you crazy.

Ruth Anne Adams said...

The hair in [Sarah Palin's] eye is bothering my husband.

Ha ha. That was bugging me too. I was distracted thinking about whether she was distracted thinking about whether it would be more distracting to disentangle her bangs from her (false?) eyelashes than to allow the bangs-eye combo to continue as a single unit.

Lisa said...

So far, she sounds smart, sane and Republican.

The left will hate her. The right will agree with her.

(Lisa said baby on a night like this...)

vbspurs said...

Does Palin have ice water in her bloodstream or is it me?

She's almost too un-nervous. It's making me nervous!

LoafingOaf said...

What a twitchy, nervous wreck Palin is!

Palladian said...

Sarah Palin's pussy is gnawing at LoafingOaf's brain again.

vbspurs said...

OOOOOOH. A little lesbian tension between Palin and Ifill just now. HAWT.

(It's late-night Althouse.)

Michael_H said...

I don't want to channel surf--anyone know the Brewers/Phillies score?

Ruth Anne Adams said...

Gwen's questions SUCK! Too complex. Easily ignored.

Trooper York said...

Phillies won 5 to 2.

Go 2 up on the series.

Michael_H said...

Ifill keeps cutting Palin off, then letting Joey Plugs run as long as he wants.

Really?

vbspurs said...

The 'Mos are getting their questions now. Surprising nod to Palin by Ifill.

I smell a skunk. Or a fish taco.

!!!

ex-prosecutor said...

If these were two lawyers, arguing, to a jury, she'd be killing him.

palladian said...

God, the only thing more boring than a Vice Presidential debate is baseball. I'd rather listen to Joseph Biden filibuster than listen to people talk about baseball. I'd rather watch "An Inconvenient Truth" 100 times than listen to people talk about baseball. SHUT UP ABOUT BASEBALL.

vbspurs said...

Nice! "Not sane or stable" about Dinner Jacket.

THE CASTRO BROTHERS. She just won Florida, que rico!!!

lem said...

Gwen went off the script to help Joe!

michael_h said...

Love the way Palin smiles as she's making notes while Joey Plugs speaks.

chip ahoy said...

No fair! They televise the back of Biden's head to show all the work was done in the front.

lawgiver said...

Cuda is landing some major body shots now. Joe's eyes are glazed, he's going downnnnnn!

john stodder said...

Palin is just so damn normal.

On TV it looks weird to be normal.

goesh said...

500+ comments - holy wow

Palin's faster pace makes her come across as very competent/intelligent, a bit smarter than Biden - she sure the heck exudes confidence - what happened to the dummy from up north???? gone, gone, gone

palladian said...

I love the milling around parts of C-SPAN broadcasts. So much better than listening to talking heads blabber.

ricpic said...

Sarah's happy.

Lefty freaks can't stand happy.

But normal human beings love happy and love Sarah.

joan said...

Karl Rove just ticked off 10 major gaffes by Joe Biden. It was hysterical.

schorsch said...

Regardless of who won, Biden's tactic failed. He was there to debate Bush and McCain, and to ignore Palin as if she wasn't worthy of his attention. She engaged him, specifically, and was therefore the only person in the debate that was actually occurring.

MORE FROM THE COMMENTS: patca said...

I am soooo relieved--and very happy. She was fabulous.

I feel like smoking a cigarette.

Paul Newman has died.

We knew he was dying, but it is sad to know he's gone. I'll have more in a few minutes, but here's a press report. Please talk about your favorite Paul Newman movies.

ADDED: To tell you the truth, Paul Newman is an actor whose movies I often avoided, for some reason. Even though I was a very frequent movie-goer during his heyday, I never saw "The Sting" or "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." I never saw "The Color of Money" or "The Hustler." Despite my law career, I never saw "The Verdict" or "Absence of Malice" or "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean." Reading over his list of movies, it seems as though I have been going out of my way to avoid Newman's movies. I don't know why. I thought he was an excellent actor, and he was certainly as good-looking as a human being can be. Perhaps it's that when I was quite young, I saw "Hud" and "Harper" and just didn't understand the point.

I've seen "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge," "Sweet Bird of Youth," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," and "Cool Hand Luke." When I think of Paul Newman movies, that's the one I think of first, the emblematic Paul Newman movie, "Cool Hand Luke":



"I've got the words of Mary, assuring me that I won't go to Hell."

IN THE COMMENTS: Ruth Anne Adams asks: "Is your misquote an Episcopalian mondegreen?" Misquote? Oh, yes, it's "Virgin Mary," not "words of Mary." Episcopalian? More likely, Beatles.

"Obama to Dispatch Female Surrogates" -- that NYT headline I flagged last night -- is now: "Obama Camp Turns to Clinton to Counter Palin."

I was struck, in the midst of my convention live-blogging, that the NYT had such an Obama-unfriendly headline. But now, they've friendlied it up. The original headline, "Obama to Dispatch Female Surrogates," put a picture in my head of Obama releasing an army of programmed fembots.



The new headline, "Obama Camp Turns to Clinton to Counter Palin," flips the image. It's not Obama, but the Obama camp -- a large, faceless group -- and now it's not a large, faceless group of women, but one particular woman, Hillary. Don't pin anything directly on Obama, and don't disrespect women by portraying them as nonindividuals.

And so suddenly, Hillary is the anti-Palin.

Hillary Is... the Palinator.



[ADDED: The image above, pointed to in the comments by Palladian, after I said: Kisses to the reader who Photoshops an image for that. Also, in the comments, was Ruth Anne's invitation: "And while you're photoshopping: Put a buff Sarah Connor body under the Sarah Palin face. No, wait. She's already done that herself."]

So now, let's read beyond the headlines:

Senator Barack Obama will increasingly lean on prominent Democratic women to undercut Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator John McCain, dispatching Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to Florida on Monday and bolstering his plan to deploy female surrogates to battleground states, Obama advisers said Thursday....

With the McCain-Palin team courting undecided female voters, including some who backed Mrs. Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Obama aides said they were counting on not only Mrs. Clinton but also Democratic female governors to rebut Ms. Palin — and, by extension, Mr. McCain. Those governors include Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas.

Another poll:

Which headline was more accurate, and why did the NYT switch to the second headline?
	The first. Changed because it was unfriendly to Obama.
	The first. And websites change these things to add excitement or to balance with other headlines.
	The second. Changed for accuracy.
	The second. But websites just vary the headlines for excitement or balance.
pollcode.com free polls

Obama, Biden, McCain, Palin — not one Baby Boomer.

Ruth Anne observes. She -- not a boomer -- is pleased.

Back in April, I wrote:

I had been thinking that if Obama wins, it will mean that we are done with Baby Boomer Presidents, after having only 2 — young Bush and male Clinton. I thought that was rather pathetic for this big, famous generation of mine.

I got a lot of flak in the comments from people who said Obama -- Oboomer -- was a boomer. I was relying on a NYT article, "Shushing the Baby Boomers."

In taking the first steps toward a presidential candidacy last week, Mr. Obama, who was born in 1961 and considers himself a member of the post-boomer generation, said Americans hungered for “a different kind of politics,” one that moved beyond the tired ideological battles of the 1960s....

Mr. Obama calculates that Americans of all ages are sick of the feuding boomers and ready to turn to the generation that came of age after Vietnam, after the campus culture wars between freaks and straights, and after young people had given up on what überboomer Hillary Rodham Clinton (who made her own announcement on the Web yesterday) called in a 1969 commencement address a search for “a more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating mode of living.”...

“In the back and forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004,” he writes, “I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the baby boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage.”

Now, that was written way back in January 2007. We're so much older now! How did that glowing picture of Obama hold up? Speaking of glowing pictures, click through to the Times to see what a caricature of Obama looked like, all those many months ago.

ADDED: The main thing that ought to make you a Boomer is that you were raised by parents who lived through the Depression and WWII. These people thought it was the greatest thing just to have a normal, nice family life. So they had us, and we, who knew nothing but that pleasant life, found it insipid and turned on them, mocked them, and rebelled. Most of us know now what assholes we were to treat them like that, after what they went through, but they made us what we were.

So being a Boomer has to do with who your parents were. Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in 1942, so she was more of a Baby Boomer herself, because she was raised by parents who went through the Depression and WWII. She lived through part of WWII herself, but only as a baby. And look how she lived her life. Obama had to build his character in response to that. Now, he did also spend a lot of his formative years living with his grandparents, and that might have produced something of a Boomer personality. But, basically, I'd say Obama is not a Boomer.

By my standard, Sarah Palin is slightly more of a Boomer than Obama, because, although she was born 2 years later, her parents were born earlier, in 1938 and 1940. Still, they mainly grew up in the post-war era, and it was their parents, Palin's grandparents, who had the key experiences that lead a person to place extraordinary value on a normal, ordinary life.

Things not said while serving as a docent in Frank Lloyd Wright's Dr. Maurice and Mrs. Margaret Greenberg House.

I was too tired last night to write very much about the Frank Lloyd Wright tour. Now, I'm up too early. (How does anyone sleep past 5 this time of year with all the birds chirping?) I'm looking at that picture I took of the Greenberg House again and thinking it looks rather ugly! Perhaps it's meant to be seen from a distance, tucked into the landscape. It was supposed to be made of stone, but Wright changed to brick to lower the cost, and that takes something away from it.

The house makes more sense from the inside, which has a huge living/dining room with two levels of big windows that stretch across a long wall and around half of 2 side walls. These look out into the middle of the trees and — if you stand at the raised floor level — the tree tops. There are terraces at the 2 sides, connected by a walkway that goes in front of the long wall of windows.



You don't see the bottom third of the forest because the house projects out over the large boulder that Wright made the starting point of his design. The site is beautiful, but it was rejected by other builders because of the big rock. I was serving as a docent explaining things to visitors on the 2008 "Wright & Like" architectural tour, and at some point in the second hour of describing the design, I thought of the Bible verse, "The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone" (or "cornerstone"). I was talking to a woman and something — I forget what — that she said made the verse spring to mind. In another situation, this could become a conversation, but it was rather obvious that quoting the Bible in this context was inappropriate. Docents are bound by the principle of the separation of church and architecture, are we not? I was not tempted by the seductions of free associating on the spot about Wright and Jesus. I can always go home and blog.

So here's the passage, Matthew 21:42:

Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the Scriptures:

"'The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes'?"

This is the part I remembered. Looking it up this morning, I see it continues in a darker tone:

"Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed."

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus' parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.

Write your own short story where the docent in the Maurice Greenberg house is talking with a woman, impulsively quotes a Bible verse, and everything subsequently goes to hell.

IN THE COMMENTS: First, there's Ruth Anne:

Hmmm....you're up early and quoting scripture on a Sunday. Perhaps you're being nudged to go somewhere?

Then, there's this thread that begins with rhhardin:

He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.

This was before paper and scissors.

And later added:

"Do you know that according to Aristotle a person who dies crushed by a column does not die a tragic death? And yet here is that nontragic death hanging over you."

here

Which prompted UWS guy to say:

Of course, a newspaper writer, were he to be crushed by a column, would have died an ironic death.

Also, I clicked the comment section to read short stories...so man-up ye wordsmiths!

Yes! Man-up ye wordsmiths!

Or — per Ruth Anne — God-up!

Ruth Anne wants a palate cleanser.

Here:



Sorry. I was out walking over the Brooklyn Bridge.

"Could it be? Might she really be talking to me?"

Ruth Anne watches a Hillary commercial.

Race and religion, Barack Obama and Clarence Thomas.

It's 3 a.m. ... And Ruth Anne Adams — commenter extraordinaire, historian of the Althouse blog, and Maternal Optimist blogger — is sending me email:

I spent a good bit of time reading the thread and the comments ["Barack Obama responds to the criticism over Jeremiah Wright"]. I kept thinking about Clarence Thomas' description of the nuns who, in the face of a segregated South, instilled in the students that they were all God's children, all worthy in dignity to learn and grow up in God's grace. I just think that there's something to chew on/turn over/mull. How did these two very prominent Black men look at the evil that is America's history with race and see it manifested in their personal religious worship? Clarence Thomas, as you may not know, has returned to full Communion with the Catholic Church. He did a fabulous interview with Raymond Arroyo of EWTN [Program #6, nun talk begins at 5:50 minutes into interview] when his book was published last year and he talked of the bitterness and hatred he could not carry. And I see Pastor Wright fomenting that bitterness and hatred.

In the Catholic Church, there are a few 'out there' parishes and the faithful know where they are. They are magnets for unorthodoxy of all kinds. If I were a politician and gaining some credibility because I called myself Catholic but I was going to these wayward parishes, I would justifiably get lots of flak. If I belonged to a 'Christian' white supremacist church, especially for 20 years, I couldn't wipe away that stink fast enough to become a credible candidate. Why is the reverse not obviously true? Is there a difference with John McCain accepting an endorsement from a daffy Catholic-hating powerful pastor with a brief visit and Barack Obama entrenching himself in his home parish? I think the Anchoress makes some reasonable points, but I think she's too generous to Barack. We're starting to see a pattern of America hatred with those people who are close to Obama. Glints of it appear when Michelle speaks [hey! has she been muzzled?] Most voters can't abide hating America to that extreme.

I bounced these off of you because I remember you simul-blogging Thomas' memoirs in the fall and I suspect you have a good basis to answer these questions that I'm merely musing about.

Glad you're back in Madison! The blog is so different there.

Ruth Anne :)

Thanks! And the blog's different without Ruth Anne in the comments, but I think she — and someone else you've probably missed — will be back in a week or so.

The Lolita Midsleeper Combi, an item of cute bedroom furniture for little girls, offered for sale by Woolworths.

For the annals of cluelessness:

Whereas many mothers were familiar with Vladimir Nabokov and his famous novel, it seems that the Woolworths staff were not. At first they were baffled by the fuss. A spokesman for the company told The Times: “What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either. We had to look it up on Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now.”

Via Metafilter. Sample comment:

Makes me think of "Amelia Earhart luggage"...

IN THE COMMENTS: Lots of imagined brand names, including — from Ruth Anne Adams — the Sylvia Plath oven range. Ouch!

ADDED: Here's an ad for the Lolita Midsleeper Combi: "This Lolita Midsleeper Combi is the perfect space-saving solution for your child's bedroom."




MORE IN THE COMMENTS: Omaha1 has more bad product names:

Jon-Benet kiddie cosmetics

Andrea Yates bathtub toys

Christopher Reeve rocking horse

OJ Simpson gloves

Lewinsky humidor

Bill O'Reilly loofah

David Koresh lighter fluid

Jim Jones fruit-flavored beverage

Michael Jackson underoos

John Denver model airplane kit

Lynn Spears' guide to successful parenting (oops that one's real!)

"I'm jealous. I can't do it either. I can't cross my legs sitting in a chair like that."

Here's Rush Limbaugh talking about the way Hillary Clinton was sitting in her chair at the debate. (Subscriber link.) (Yes, I subscribe to the Rush Limbaugh website so I can keep track of these things for you.)

There was also -- I'm not going to say -- never mind, I'm not going to say it because all I'm going to do is make women mad, don't want to do that, making women mad is going to send -- all right, I'm going to say it, but I'm going to stop doing this in the future. After the first part of the debate, standing up there at those podiums and then they took a commercial break, and Blitzer came back and they were all sitting in chairs. I'm going to pay for this. See, this is the kind of thing that you're not supposed to say, that when you say this, all it does is drive people to Hillary, women especially. (sigh) But see, I'm not going to tease you, it's really unfair to say I'm going to say something and then not say it. So I'm going to say it now. She was the only one sitting there who could not cross her legs.

At this point, he takes a break and then comes back doing a voice that the transcript calls his "new castrati impression." That is, he affects an effeminate male voice — and he doesn't mind seeming homophobic or not knowing how the singular and plural are formed in Italian. He doesn't care about the pedantic distinction between a podium and a lectern either, we just saw.

Anyway, in that voice, he's all:

"That's just horrible, Mr. Limbaugh! I can't believe you said that. That's just horrible. Why do you even notice things like that, Mr. Limbaugh? I can't believe you!"

Back to the regular voice:

It's very simple, ladies and gentlemen. I'm a leg man. I'm jealous. I can't do it either. I can't cross my legs sitting in a chair like that. I'm jealous of people who can and I'm jealous of other people who don't, and it makes me feel better about myself, okay? I can't do it, either.

So, Rush is fat, and everyone knows it, and some people say it in the most mocking way. And maybe that makes him think he's got license to call other people fat — especially if they're liberals.

Of course, he's being rude for some evil fun. But he's also ignorant, because there is a whole big thing about women not crossing their legs. It's both a health issue and a point of etiquette:

1. Crossing your legs at the knee is reputed to cause varicose veins and hip problems in women.

2. Women — at least women of a certain age — have been taught as a matter of etiquette to cross their legs at the ankles when they sit, and that is exactly what Hillary Clinton was doing at the debate.

I noticed the leg positions at the debate myself, because each of the 3 candidates were sitting differently:

1. Hillary had her legs exactly the way any good image consultant would advise any woman to sit. (It has nothing to do with chubbiness.)

2. Barack Obama — at the point when I noticed — had his legs crossed with the left ankle on the right knee, a position that would look insane if taken by a woman in any remotely serious situation, even if she is wearing pants. It's very casual. Arguably, it was rude for Obama to have his foot way up there with the sole aimed at Hillary.

3. John Edwards was sitting with his legs apart and feet planted on the floor — what you might call a "wide stance." This too would look awful on a woman, even if she were wearing pants. It too seems casual, and many men look crude in that position, which in some situations — such as on a subway car — is inconsiderate because it hogs extra space.

Bonus: Scholarship! "World Distribution of Certain Postural Habits."

IN THE COMMENTS: People are saying it's not about fat at all. It's about testicles. Why did he say "I'm jealous of people who can" cross their legs then? But it is funnier that way.

ADDED: And here I am, the one with the reputation for being the first one to notice when the subject is genitalia. Anyway, as the Althouse Blog Historian Ruth Anne Adams points out in the comments, the photographic record is clear that females my age were taught to cross our legs at the ankles:



I'm the one in the white eyelet lace skirt following all the rules. (Enlarge.)

Bow down, Chris Matthews!

You cannot be disrespectful to Hillary Clinton, the woman.

AND: Here's the pithy statement that he was blabbering about:



IN THE COMMENTS: Ruth Anne Adams writes:

So now Hillary and the Intern-ment problem are equivalent with John McCain and his Vietnamese internment? I think he owes McCain an apology, too.

MORE IN THE COMMENTS: Meade writes:

Tyra Banks to Chris Matthews:

Are you embarrassed to be such a pussy? I would be embarrassed.

Sunrise with an X.

Is it a sign? It's the first thing I see when I open the blind this morning, my birthday.

ADDED: Ruth Anne started a little Althouse blog meme yesterday, and Simon contributes here.

AND: Blake continues the meme.

AND: Sean Wisnieski joins the meme.

Thanks.

Ruth Anne.

That time Rick Lazio invaded Hillary's space.

Everyone talks about the time Rick Lazio invaded Hillary Clinton's space in a debate when the two were running for Senator. The myth is that people were viscerally offended by a man aggressively approaching a woman.

The Clinton campaign recently complained about "the boys" ganging up at a debate, and there was speculation that it was an attempt to get people to react to her opponents the way New York voters reacted to Rick Lazio.

This made me want to see the old video of the debate with Lazio, but I couldn't find it through Google and YouTube searching. My commenters were helping me search, and Ruth Anne Adams came up with the clip from the debate as it was used on "The Daily Show." But, finally, Hector Owen found the whole segment of the debate: here. (Ignore the error message. It should play.)

Let's examine the Lazio Space Invader myth. Here's a contemporaneous article in the NYT:

... Mrs. Clinton exploited an opportunity before a friendly audience of women to make a concerted attack on Mr. Lazio's debate tactics. Many supporters of Mrs. Clinton said they found Mr. Lazio to be pushy and disrespectful during the debate in Buffalo -- bullying her in a way that he would not have bullied a male opponent.

Mrs. Clinton's senior advisers have seized on that notion to blunt favorable portrayals of Mr. Lazio as strong-willed and determined, and Mrs. Clinton joined the effort yesterday. Expanding on a comment she made the morning after the debate, Mrs. Clinton received knowing chuckles and applause when she said having two younger brothers was the best preparation for her sometimes bruising encounter with Mr. Lazio.

Then she complained of having to share her lectern with an overly aggressive Mr. Lazio. (He approached her at the end of the debate and urged her to sign a document he said was a promise not to raise or spend any more soft money.)...

''How about that idea that you turned off women voters?'' Gabe Pressman of WNBC-TV asked [Lazio].

Mr. Lazio said women were being sold short by suggestions that they would not vote for him because he gave Mrs. Clinton a tough debate....

Here's Kate Phillips (of the NYT) after the recent debate:

[S]o many political correspondents... have invoked the Rick Lazio moment...

The former Congressman’s charge across the stage in September of that year was equated with bullying, something that’s a far cry from the largely reasoned responses of Mrs. Clinton’s rivals on the stage the other night.

Still, we’re told it’s all gender politics, or as one of our colleagues once called it back then, hormonal politics (on both sides, folks).

Funny how history and language keep replaying, no?

WaPo's Ruth Marcus wrote:

Now this six-on-one stuff. Clinton stumbled in the debate, uncharacteristically but nowhere near fatally. In response, Penn & Co. are playing a good game of rope-a-dope.

After all, they have experience with this move, from the 2000 New York Senate race, when Republican Rick Lazio loomed into Clinton's personal space during a debate and quickly saw his numbers tank. For the Clinton campaign, the best thing would be to have the Philadelphia story played as Lazio II -- more bullies trying to intimidate her....

[U]sing gender this way is a setback. Hillary Clinton is woman enough to take these attacks like a man.

Yeah, that's what Lazio said at the time and voters resisted.

Here's what Rush Limbaugh said:

Now she's out there playing this victim card, and a lot of people in the media are not happy about this -- and I'll tell you what it is. You know, it's not just the cheapest form of pandering. To all of a sudden, say, "I'm a strong woman. I'm strong as a man! I can handle this job." Now all of a sudden to go victim, and to have your campaign tell the press, "Yeah, well, this is part of a long-planned strategy based on what happened when Rick Lazio invaded her space during a Senate debate for the election in New York."

So they're going back to that playbook because they think it worked then, but running for president is a little bit different from running for the Senate, especially if most of your career has been built up on, "You're tough, and you're not going to back down from anybody! You're Hillary Clinton! You've got a testicle lockbox."

(A testicle lockbox?)

But the fact is: It did work then. You can say, as Phillips did, that what Lazio did was different. But look at the video. Don't rely on the myth. Look at the video. It might have been inept theater to ply the piece of paper at her, but it wasn't an effort to bully the woman out of politics.

If "every campaign is... a narrative," what's Hillary Clinton's narrative?

Mickey Kaus looks at John Ellis's idea, which he gleaned from the Nixon campaign. Ellis says:

She knows what it's like to get her head kicked in every day, day after day after day, for months and years on end. She endures....

...I think her narrative is not "she's inevitable because she's experienced and the others are too light." I think her narrative is "formidable, battle-scarred, flawed, but important." I think [Hillary strategist Mark] Penn thinks he can micro-target to victory. I think they need a large macro theme that enables people to vote for Hillary, even though they don't want to.

It's obviously late now. This is work they should have done in 2006 and 2007: setting the context for "understanding" her candidacy ...

Ha ha. They need to explain to us how to vote for Hillary, even though we don't want to.

But I'm not really laughing. Actually, I picture myself doing exactly that. I don't like her, and I don't want to vote for her, but somehow, I assume that in the end I will. I'm resisting now — look at all my recent Hillary posts — but it's probably because I see myself ending up doing what I don't want to do.

So Mickey says:

Campaigning as tough, battle-scarred fixture, etc. would certainly serve Hillary better, should she lose Iowa and New Hampshire, than campaigning as "inevitable." It seems entirely possible... that primary voters might feel like resurrecting Ms. Durability after she's suffered a bit by way of a New Hampshire loss. (Making her suffer a bit might even be the point...) But there's no point in resurrecting a failed Ms. Inevitability. ...

So "enduring" is the new "inevitable." It's all "inevitable" can be when you're not — you know — inevitable. Plus, "enduring" seems almost charmingly complex. Which has that pseudo-warmth that's as warm as you can be when you're ... Nixonian.



(By the way, where the video of Rick Lazio invading Hillary's space in that old debate? Is it not available on line? If not, why not?)

ADDED: The video is hard to find, but Ruth Anne Adams found "The Daily Show"'s version of it.

Here's that Obama on SNL sketch everyone's talking about.

(Via Ruth Anne!)