"[I]n the hours after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, we saw J.D. Vance come out with... the most strongly worded of anyone seeking to be his VP."

"Yeah. And it has some factual problems. Here's what he said. He said: "Today [the attempted assassination] is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination.' We should say there's no evidence that that's true. We don't know the motivations of the shooter. We don't know that he consumed any of that rhetoric or that Vance is even characterizing it correctly.... I think Vance in a lot of ways, kind of embodies the id of Trump and that instinct to fight. And even though these sort of manufactured statements from the campaign are calling for unity and calling for peace, what Trump really wants... is someone who is going to keep fighting, you know, factual or not."

Said Michael C. Bender on yesterday's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "Trump Picks His Running Mate and Political Heir."

AND: This morning, I'm seeing "'They' didn’t shoot Donald Trump/Despite the lack of any clear motive, the actions of Thomas Crooks have been attributed to the Democratic Party at large," by Philip Bump (in WaPo). It's funny to use the passive voice — "actions... have been attributed" — exactly when you are complaining about the amorphous "They." Once again, I think of the Saul Steinberg image:

Find that image in Saul Steinberg's "The Inspector."

Bump writes: "There is no evidence that Crooks shot at Trump because he had been influenced by anti-Trump political rhetoric, and there is no evidence that Crooks was literally or figuratively part of a collective effort to sideline or kill the former president.... There’s no known connection between the known shooter and the broad, nebulous galaxy of opponents Trump and his allies envision.... So Crooks and his actions become abstract. They did it or they facilitated it or they caused it. And, for the purposes of political rhetoric, that will have to suffice."

"We’re now in a Marxism state of mind, a communism state of mind, which is far worse. We’re a nation in decline."

"Our enemies are desperate to stop us because they know that we are the only ones who can stop them.... They know that we can defeat them. They know that we will defeat them. But they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you and I’m just standing in their way. That’s all I’m doing. I’m standing in their way. And that’s why I’m here today. That’s why I’m standing before you, because we are going to finish what we started. We started something that was America. We’re going to complete the mission. We’re going to see this battle through to ultimate victory. We’re going to make America great again. With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers. They are people that don’t get it, although, in some cases, they get it. They get it for their wallets, but we can’t do that. We can’t let that happen. We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists. We will throw off the political class that hates our country. They actually hate our country...."

From the unabridged transcript of Trump's CPAC speech.

Reading it — after watching it live — I'm struck by the intense repetition of the word "they." It makes me think of the unforgettable Saul Steinberg image:

Find that image in Steinberg's "The Inspector."

Elusiveness.

I'm reading...



From "The Amazing Treasure Trove of Bill Cunningham/Here comes a big new picture book, organized by decade and with more than 700 photographs" (NYT).

I bought the book, "Bill Cunningham: On the Street: Five Decades of Iconic Photography."

What is the word for writing a word in a way that expresses its meaning? It was a popular form of humor, years ago. I'm talking about the accidentally elusive representation of "elusiveness" in the screenshot text above. For example, you might write the word "fancy" in letters that have curlicues. Does it seem like something that was done in Mad Magazine? It's almost the same thing as what you see in the best of Saul Steinberg (from "The Inspector"). Depicting "now or never":



This is a somewhat different humor idea from Steinberg (that is, if you know the word I'm looking for, I don't think it's the word for this):

On the cover of this week's New Yorker: a Saul Steinberg drawing of a Milwaukee Braves catcher.

The drawing is from 1954, when the great artist followed what was Milwaukee's baseball team back then. At the link, there's also a slideshow of drawings from Steinberg's baseball sketchbook, including a couple really nice New York Yankees drawings and a fine Milwaukee Brave (#5 (I especially like all the writing on the bat)).

"In Romania, on moonlit nights, the peasant women used to look down into a well until they saw the reflection of the moon."

"Then they let down a pail, slowly drew up water with the moon in it and, with a spoon, drank its reflection. Looking down into the well at that moment, they could see the face of their future bridegroom."

(A quote at the end of an essay by Saul Steinberg, found in a fruitless search for a drawing I remember or misremember with "we" and "they" —or is it "Who are they?" — drawn to signify the emotion contained in those words — a search undertaken after writing "So we they are not chomping cheeseburgers simply for sensual pleasure....")

Don't Do It!

The "Do It!" image came via Meade who saw it at Magnificent Ruin and IM'd it to me, where it appeared in my iChat window right under the Saul Steinberg "Don't," which I'd IM'd to him after he IM'd me this Saul Steinberg "No!," which he'd IM'd to me because of my first post of the day, quoting Bob Dylan, asking about that carried-in-arms daughter who always told her father "no," which I blogged about because Meade had started singing "Tears of Rage," a song that mentions Independence Day, which it is, and which — fittingly — embodies the spirit embodied in "Do It!"

"DO IT!: Scenarios of the Revolution," is a book by Jerry Rubin — Introduction by Eldridge Cleaver — which you can buy at that Amazon link. That's the Simon & Schuster publication, but in the poster image above, we see the tiny logo — in the lower right-hand corner — for a different publisher: Erectile Press. Erectile Press?! Maybe that was the hard-cover edition.

UPDATE, 11/16/17: I'm adding a tag and seeing the "Do It!" image is gone. I tried to use the "Wayback Machine" to recover it, but could not. Sorry! Sad to see this post go to ruin. They did call that place Magnificent Ruin. I could have preserved the image if I'd handled it differently. Ah, well...