"We take inspiration from the 92 year-old owner of Fox News, and send our best regards on your accurate coverage of extreme MAGA Freedom Caucus complaining that President Biden outsmarted them on the budget as he continued the unprecedented bipartisan winning streak that is central to the best legislative record in modern American history."
Then:
"I go back and forth on whether these stories are born out of Fox News executives trying to send a signal to y’all’s 92 year-old chairman, or that 92 year-old chairman’s frustrations with the political successes of a younger man running an exponentially more complex operation.”
There's a big difference between owning a company and seeking election to high office. That Murdoch hangs onto his power says nothing positive about Biden's effort to cling to power in his old age. Biden must convince us, the people, that he's fit. He's younger than Murdoch and at least as power hungry. That's Bates's argument.
ADDED: At Meadhouse, we've been catching up on the HBO series "Succession," which has a character based to some extent on Rupert Murdoch. I bought the Season 2 "Complete Scripts," and I thought this was interesting, from the Introduction by Frank Rich:
On Wednesday, the America's Next Top Model cycle 1 winner responded to a photo of the actor, critiquing her appearance as not being befitting of her role in the post-apocalyptic TV series The Last of Us. She wrote in a since-deleted tweet, “her body says life of luxury...not post apocolyptic [sic] warlord.” She added, “where is Linda Hamilton when you need her?,” referring to the Terminator star. Lynskey saw the social media message before the model deleted it, screenshotting the exchange and tweeting it out with the caption, “Firstly—this is a photo from my cover shoot for InStyle magazine, not a still from HBO’s The Last Of Us.” She added, “And I’m playing a person who meticulously planned & executed an overthrow of FEDRA. I am supposed to be SMART, ma’am. I don’t need to be muscly. That’s what henchmen are for.”
"FEDRA" is an acronym. You need to know the show to get it. Or look it up.
"SMART" not an acronym. Lynskey is just yelling. I recommend not yelling that you're smart. It's too...
I'm reading "Like Marie Antoinette," a book review written by Mario Puzo in 1968 and published in the NYT. The book under review is "The Jeweler’s Eye," by William F. Buckley Jr.
There are a lot of things I want to blog about this morning, so why am back in 1968? It's because of the first thing I wrote about this morning, the NYT obituary for Kathy Boudin. I was struck by the sentence, "During the stickup, the gunmen killed a security guard, Peter Paige." Stickup? That strikes me as gangster slang, lacking the formality I would expect from the NYT in the account of this event that took place 4 decades ago.
Does the NYT generally use "stickup" to describe serious matters? I searched its archive, and the Mario Puzo article caught my attention:
"But Fredo is more of a complex, tragic figure than political mudslinging would allow.... In 'The Godfather,' [John] Cazale gave Fredo that sense of well-meaning haplessness.... The second 'Godfather' film brought Fredo into the foreground (not his natural place in the family portrait) and deepened him. Fredo’s involvement in a bungled attempt on Michael’s life ('I know it was you'), which leads Michael to succumb to his darkest instincts and commit fratricide, is at the movie’s tragic core, and it gives Cazale the most beautifully acted scenes of his career. The most iconic is the brothers’ conversation in the boathouse, when Fredo pitifully pleads for respect: 'Send Fredo off to do this. Send Fredo off to do that. Let Fredo take care of some Mickey Mouse night club somewhere. . . . I can handle things! I’m smart! Not like everybody says!' Cazale delivers this feckless rant with wide-eyed rage and self-pity, flopping up and down in his lounge chair like a beached guppy."
"But my favorite moment comes just before he’s whacked, as he sits with his young nephew Anthony by the lake with their fishing gear...."
"It’s probably the only time Fredo ever outshone his brothers.... Fredo’s death is as wrenching as it is only because we care so deeply about him—he’s pathetic, sure, but he has reserves of humanity that he never got to express, holding himself to an impossible yardstick of power and violence when all he wanted to do was go fishing.... More than four decades later, Fredo’s still not getting any respect, but at least he’s getting noticed."
Lots of people have been asking whether it's true — as Chris Cuomo asserted — that "Fredo" is the equivalent of the n-word. I think a big difference is that Fredo is a specific character. To call an Italian "Fredo" is more like calling a black person "Uncle Tom." With that kind of insult, we could go back to the origin of the character, as Schulman is doing with Fredo. But that's not what we usually do. The character takes on a meaning of his own within the insult. You won't be able to get away with calling someone "Uncle Tom" by detailing what's in "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
The Wikipedia article, "Uncle Tom," is broken into sections, with "Original characterization" ("a rejection of the existing stereotypes of minstrel shows... a Jesus-like figure") separate from "Epithet" ("an excessively subservient person, particularly when that person perceives their own lower-class status based on race... [or] who betrays their own group by participating in its oppression, whether or not they do so willingly").
It's interesting to go back to the original meaning of a term, but it won't and shouldn't get you off the hook when you use an epithet here and now.
According to the NY Post, this clip, in which Cuomo strongly objects to the epithet "Fredo," is said to have been "filmed Sunday on Shelter Island and sent to a right-wing website and blog, before being shared on Twitter."
A man in NY yesterday approached CNN's Chris Cuomo and called him "Fredo"
Cuomo: "You're going to have a problem"
Man: "What are you going to do about it?"
Cuomo: "I'll fuckin ruin your shit. I'll fucking throw you down these stairs"
I've got to say — and I have only watched the clip and not read any of the commentary about it — I have no problem with what Cuomo did here. He returned words for words, he defended himself, and he acquired complete submission from the man who provoked him. Maybe some people think the guy who said "Fredo" won because he got his video and Cuomo lost his temper. But I don't think Cuomo is out of control. I think he knew what he was doing and chose to do it. It's quite similar to what Trump does, and I don't think Trump is raging and having melt downs when people who hate him are saying he is. Same thing with Cuomo.
“Don’t f–ing insult me like that,” the Queens native fumes. “You call me ‘Fredo’ it’s like I call you punk b–ch, you like that?”
Oh, Queens! See? Like Trump. It's how they talk in Queens. Don't be prejudiced against the Queensman.
The little man who made the video asserts that he believed Cuomo's name actually was Fredo. Cuomo won't let him back down: "You did not think that… stand up like a man. Own what you said." Manhood is at stake. A hypothetical fight is discussed: "I’ll f–ing throw you down these stairs like a f–ing punk… you’re gonna call me Fredo, take a f–ing swing? I’ll f–ing wreck your shit."
Cuomo doesn't hit the guy. It's macho posturing. Notice the theory, propounded by Cuomo, that the guy is trying to get Cuomo to hit him so he can bring a lawsuit against the deep-pocketed son of a gov.
1. Earlier today, I had "Deval Patrick, drinking alone" ("... I was actually quite drunk, by myself”). In the comments, The Godfather said, "Drinking alone is bad enough. Admitting to a reporter that you do so is weird." I said:
I don't see anything wrong with eating alone in a restaurant and ordering a drink (or even 2 or 3) with your dinner. But getting "quite drunk" alone (especially in public) is embarrassing.
To Americans, drinking alone can sound, well, lonely (and, as we’ll get to shortly, problematic), but Finns typically don’t tend to see it that way, in part because they’re quite comfortable with solitude.
"Finns, like most Scandinavian cultures, are very good at being by themselves," says Briana Volk, the half-Finnish co-owner of the Portland Hunt + Alpine Club, a Scandinavian-influenced cocktail bar in Maine.... "Finns are fairly introverted and private,” she tells NBC News BETTER. “We generally don't say hello to one another on the street or on the bus and we're used to enduring long, tough winters — sometimes in total darkness. For these reasons, enjoying a drink or two by yourself is a natural thing."
I suspect that "gangster-like" refers to the idea, from "The Godfather," of an offer you can't refuse. But:
1. I don't think a firm, unilateral offer is the same thing as an offer you must accept because the alternative is death.
2. The idea of "The Godfather" seems connected to Pompeo's Italian ethnicity, and it's unsophisticated of North Korea to display ethnic bias.
3. There's a hint of an expression of love for American pop culture — the movies... and even the gangsters. Perhaps there was an idea of canceling out the idea that Kim Jong-Un was ignorant of Western pop culture in that he didn't know the song "Rocket Man," a knowledge gap highlighted by Mike Pompeo's giving Kim a Trump-signed copy of the recording.
4. Pompeo's response — "If those requests were gangster-like, the world is a gangster" — is terse and memorable, but it is ambiguous as hell. One meaning is: The requests are not gangster-like, because they're typical of the way deal-making is done all over the world. But the other meaning is: The world is a gangster. In a way, it doesn't matter which of those meanings is true or intended. The message is the same: Quit whining, face reality, and make a deal.
I've been trying to understand Maureen Dowd's NYT article about Uma Thurman, which appears to be about sexual abuse at the hands of Harvey Weinstein but halfway through becomes an article about a car crash that took place during the shooting of "Kill Bill."
This is a separate post on one specific thing that I left out of the linked post: Uma Thurman's last-minute disinclination to drive the car because "a teamster" led her to believe something was wrong.
What nuance did Dowd mean to slip into our head with that word "teamster"? Is there a connotation of violence, a hint of deliberately sabotaging. Here's the image I got:
Yeah, I know. That's gangsters, not teamsters. Even though a "gang" and a "team" might seem like the same thing, the word "teamster" referred, originally, to someone who works with a team of horses (or oxen), and it only later got extended to truck drivers. Only "gangster" refers to a group of criminals. The seeming equivalence of these words might affect your mind, but mostly when you hear "teamster," you think of the Teamsters Union. Unions might make you think of violence. If the union guy warns you something's not right with that car, it carries some extra meaning, some warning — don't get in that car.
WALLACE: You also use a phrase which I have to say that I only heard for the first time in the last couple of weeks, "the deep state". And that’s the notion that there’s an Obama shadow government embedded in the bureaucracy that is working against this new president. I think that some folks are going to think that’s right on and some folks will think it’s awfully conspiratorial.
LIMBAUGH: Well, I would love to claim credit for that, but actually, I think a reporter by the name of Glenn Greenwald at "The Intercept" who has got a relationship with -- what’s his name? Assange. I think [Greenwald] actually coined the term.* And I think it works. I don’t think -- who is driving this business that the Russians hacked the election? It’s the Democrat Party. It’s Hillary. It’s Obama. It’s all those people who just can’t accept...
And then later Wallace had WaPo's Charles Lane on a panel discussion:
WALLACE: [The Obama administration in 2009] didn’t get the resistance from the news media. Some would say that -- that it was very compliant and -- and you certainly didn’t get resistance from the -- the deep state, I’m now loving the expression --
I want to include all of Lane's answer just because I thought he said a lot of good things (not because they're on the topic of "deep state"):
LANE: You sure got a lot... of resistance from the problems. But let me make my second point. Of course you’re getting resistance from all these sort of establishment agencies, if you like, because Donald Trump himself came in promising to attack them, promising to disrupt them, promising to take them down. What does he expect them to do, just stand back and let him, you know, destroy their influence and their power? Of course there’s going to be resistance. But, you know, he -- it’s not as if he avoids provocation of these people, particularly the media, as you have been pointing out. He relishes this combat. A lot of what he’s complaining about as resistance and so forth is resistance that he himself is provoking for the very political reasons.... For his base, a battle with the media is wonderful. It’s almost as good as actual policy change because it makes -- it confirms their world view. It confirms their view of what’s wrong with the country and its terrific politics.
State within a state is a political situation in a country when an internal organ ("deep state"), such as the armed forces and civilian authorities (intelligence agencies, police, administrative agencies and branches of governmental bureaucracy), does not respond to the civilian political leadership. Although the state within the state can be conspiratorial in nature, the Deep State can also take the form of entrenched unelected career civil servants acting in a non-conspiratorial manner, to further their own interests (e.g., job security, enhanced power and authority, pursuit of ideological goals and objectives, and the general growth of their agency) and in opposition to the policies of elected officials, by obstructing, resisting, and subverting the policies and directives of elected officials. The term, like many in politics, derives from the Greek language (κράτος εν κράτει, kratos en kratei, later adopted into Latin as imperium in imperio or status in statu).
That article has a long list of historical examples, including one for the United States, which goes here. Excerpt:
According to Philip Giraldi, the nexus of power is centered on the military–industrial complex, intelligence community, and Wall Street, while Bill Moyers points to plutocrats and oligarchs. Professor Peter Dale Scott also mentions "big oil" and the media as key players, while David Talbot focuses on national security officials, especially Allen Dulles. Mike Lofgren, an ex-Washington staffer who has written a book on the issue, includes Silicon Valley, along with "key elements of government" and Wall Street....
IN THE COMMENTS: The Godfather said:
I'm concerned that this business of complaining about some "deep state" in the federal government is counterproductive.
I understand the "Yes, Minister" phenomenon, the beaurocracy's protection of its own position and power. I practiced law in Washington DC for almost 50 years, and I saw this all the time. One aspect of it is the glorification of "public service". The lawyer who got a job with a government agency was somehow a "better" person than his private sector counterpart. This is often quite sincere. When I was in law school in New York City, 1965-68, there was a dramatic shift in students' aspirations, no longer to Wall Street, but to Washington. They really wanted to go to the New Frontier and build the Great Society. They -- or more accurately their successors -- didn't sign on to "Make America Great Again". That's going to be a problem for Trump as it was for Reagan and GWBush, Presidents who came into office intending to reduce the size and power of the federal government.
But the problem I have with the term "deep state" (or "dark state" as one commenter referred to it) is the implication that there is a conscious and coherent conspiracy to undermine democratic and constitutional governance. References to the CIA and the Military, etc. seem to lead in that direction. Now I have no doubt that there are "spooks" out there who are willing to play their own games if they can get away with it. Somehow Nixon, who should have known better, allowed them to try to get away with it, and other "spooks" nailed him for doing so. But if there is a conscious and coherent conspiracy of government employees that is trying, in their official positions, to undermine the democratically-elected President, then that ought to be revealed to the public. So far, I haven't seen any evidence that this has happened. But if you think it has, let's have the evidence -- not inference, evidence. There are a lot of lawyers commenting on this blog, and you know what evidence is.
In the first post of today, there's a quote about a white supremacist troll who "listed examples that appeared to jive with the sample of angry responses."
In the comments, Tom B said, "JIBE not JIVE you f*%#ing @&*%! aaaaaaaaaaah," and The Godfather said "Thanks, Tom B: You screamed so I don't have to," and holdfast said: "That's ok, I speak Jive"... which is that flies above all controversy.
A reader emails: "A local 'institute' steps into the New Age mumbo jumbo." She links to the website of Usona Institute, "a medical research organization." Its "affiliates and collaborators" include The University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics and University of Wisconsin – Madison School of Pharmacy. The first link goes to a page headed "about," which has a fuzzy photo of a woman silhouetted against a mountain ridge and the following text:
When those we love are in pain, human nature compels us to help. We try conventional methods to show our compassion, but sometimes they fall short. So we search for answers outside traditional boundaries to respond to those situations that are deeply challenging.
Our immediate goal is simple. We want to help people with a life-threatening cancer diagnosis lift their anxiety and depression with the therapeutic, guided use of entheogens* which can serve as a potential adjuncts to currently available treatments. We’ve witnessed this unique experience and have seen how many patients have attained a richer, more meaningful quality of life. It’s an experience that may help them achieve what every person desires before they breathe their last breath—closer interpersonal relationships and inner peace.
Did I miss anything? I record 4 Sunday morning talk shows, and I usually get around to watching at least 3 of them — perhaps while eating lunch. I jot down key words to search for when the transcript comes out, and I blog a few things. But yesterday, I had a mental block. I couldn't bring myself to drag even one of those things up out of the DVR.
Maybe the truth is I actually loathe these shows, and I'm only watching to find what I loathe most because encountering something loathed leads to blogging, which I love. But there's always something bloggable. I don't need this ritual ordeal of slogging through those shows. The blog rolls on, with or without the damned shows.
But maybe it was something about this week. Did I anticipate particular stories that I didn't want to have to hear about? Cosby? Obama's executive order? Analyzing a Ferguson riot before it happens? Israel and Iran?
Trying to analyze my own resistance, I remember something I saw in the comments yesterday. The Godfather wrote:
Ann, for the first time since I've been reading your blog, you have posted absolutely nothing today in which I have any interest.
I do not say this as a criticism, but rather as praise. It's remarkable that in five or more years every day you have posted something of interest to ME, with my own peculiar tastes. Tonight, I'll rest.
You may remember that the subheading to this blog was (for a long time): "Politics and the aversion to politics, law and law school, high and low culture, and the way things look from Madison, Wisconsin." If you search this blog for "the aversion to politics," you'll find a lot of posts, including: "Political blogging with an aversion to politics: my little corner of the blogosphere."
I'm always getting back to my old attraction to aversion.
For many of us it is offensive when those who do not properly respect the scriptures or give them their proper authority, pull them out and use them out of context to make a political point....
I have read your site for several years, commenting occasionally, and I feel pretty confident that you don't take much stock in the whole Christianity thing.
The Godfather said:
I get the feeling that some Christian commenters don't think your citations of scripture are sincere. They think you're being a smart ass. It doesn't really bother me: You're a law prof, and my experience leads me to conclude that all law profs are smart asses.
And Jon Burack said:
As to Mid-Life Lawyer who is "offended" by people pulling Bible quotes out and not giving them the take approved by "proper authority," I think Martin Luther let that cat out of the bag a long time ago. Or maybe it was the printing press. The proper authority long ago went up in a puff of smoke.
Reading the Gospels, I see Jesus as challenging people about their beliefs, perceiving that they do not truly believe, and holding them to a much higher standard of what real belief is.
When I look at what purportedly religious people say and do, I question whether they are what they claim to be. Religion is used to serve human interests on earth, and all of that is pragmatic and social.
Show me the true believer. What would the true believer do and say?
In at least a dozen sexual assault cases since the president’s remarks at the White House in May, judges and defense lawyers have said that Mr. Obama’s words as commander in chief amounted to “unlawful command influence,” tainting trials as a result. Military law experts said that those cases were only the beginning and that the president’s remarks were certain to complicate almost all prosecutions for sexual assault...
In his comments on sexual assault, Mr. Obama said, “I expect consequences.”
In the military I personally never got above O-3 (Captain), but I've known some very (and fairly) high-ranking officers, and it's clear as glass that many officers would be influenced by what the President said. When you are up for promotion to general or flag rank (i.e., general or admiral), or have that rank and are looking for another star/stripe, you don't want somebody saying, He let that master sergeant who screwed the corporal off with a reprimand, when he should have thrown him in the stockade and then dishonorably discharged the pig, like the President said he/she should. The guys/gals that figure they'll retire at O-6 (Colonel or (Navy/Coast Guard) Captain) and are almost there, can probably tell the President (figuratively) to kiss-off, but the pressure on those who aspire to the higher ranks to conform to a publicly-stated political policy of the C-in-C is often irresistible.
I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Encourage Althouse by making a donation:
Make a 1-time donation or set up a monthly donation of any amount you choose:
Posts
