What makes Biden Biden has been designated "creepy," and he's said he gets that, but deep inside, he believes in what to him feels like charm and lovability.

Joe Biden, who has publicly stated that he would stop touching women without their permission and would respect their space, touches a young girl at a campaign rally

Biden tells her, “I bet you’re as bright as you are good looking” pic.twitter.com/CtAVELvYrX

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) May 28, 2019

I know I don't really know how he feels deep inside. I'm just imagining. I'm also capable of imagining that — having been a politician all these years — he has no deep inside. There's just a superficial style and self-presentation, and it's become instinctive and habitual, and it's worked all these years. What else can the old man do? If you don't want his bundle of instincts, you don't want him, do you?

How will he go on — with antagonists everywhere looking to take his adorable moments and spin them into stuff like "CRINGE: Joe Biden gets handsy with young girl, says ‘I’ll bet you’re as bright as you are good-looking'" — which I'm reading this morning at Twitchy.

By the way, the word "cringe" originally meant "To contract the muscles of the body, usually involuntarily; to shrink into a bent or crooked position; to cower" (OED). It was about fear. It acquired the figurative meaning: "To experience an involuntary inward shiver of embarrassment, awkwardness, disgust, etc.; to wince or shrink inwardly; (hence) to feel extremely embarrassed or uncomfortable." It's used casually in political discussions, but if you picture the reaction — a sustained muscular contraction (meaning #1) or quick spasm felt only internally (meaning #2) — the person doing the cringing looks ridiculous.

It's a vivid word worn down by overuse. The OED's examples include this watered-down use from Time Magazine in 1993: "Privately, Clinton advisers cringed at the wreckage left behind by all the U-turns." It's like the Clinton advisers are looking at dead bodies in that car-wreck metaphor and shivering in horror.

But this is the emotional politics we've created for ourselves. It's the American culture. Do you feel comfortably part of it or are you, like me, feeling distanced and put off? I'm coolly observing all this by the way. Not shivering or spasming at all.

If you were relying on the "hipster racism" fad 10 years ago...

... prepare to get raked over the coals of social media now.

"Actor David Cross’ excuse for ‘racist’ joke to Asian American actress raises eyebrows" (Twitchy):

“Arrested Development” actor-comedian David Cross recently found himself in hot ham water after Asian American actress Charlyne Yi shared an uncomfortable memory with her Twitter followers:

Charlyne Yi ✔ @charlyne_yi
I think about the first time I met David Cross ten years ago & he made fun of my pants (that were tattered because I was poor). Dumbfounded I stared at him speechless and he said to me "what's a matter? You don't speak English?? Ching-chong-ching-chong".

She must hate him to dredge that up out of context now. You can read the tweets that followed and Cross's effort to explain. It happened in Shreveport, and I must have been referencing Shreveport by doing a Southern redneck racist character, not my actual self.

I did enjoy the "hot ham water" link.

And if you've forgotten about "hipster racism," here's the Wikipedia article on the subject:

Hipster racism, is engaging in behaviors traditionally regarded as racist and defending them as being performed ironically or satirically.... Van Kerckhove used the term hipster racism in an article, "The 10 biggest race and pop culture trends of 2006" [PDF]...

See? 2006. Cross was on trend when he performed what I believed was hipster racism 10 years ago. Is David Cross a hipster? I actually googled that. I found a 2015 interview in which he deplored hipsters:

There’s this smug elitism to it; this cultural elitism. The whole thing is, You’re perpetuating this. This thing you report to hate and you think is such a bad example of our culture, that exists because people like you talk about it with detached irony, yet you’re still supporting its very existence.

Did Google women stay home from work because they were upset over the Damore memo?

I'm seeing this purported fact in right-wing media, with the usual mockery, but I'm skeptical. I'll just say that before doing my research. I'll update soon.

UPDATE 1: First stop, Twitchy, where the headline is "NPR: Women at Google were so upset over memo citing biological differences they skipped work" and there are snarky tweets like "Women at Google defy stereotype by getting super-emotional and calling in sick over a man saying something they don't like." And "Emotional women skipped work because they were triggered by a memo that suggested that women are generally more emotional." The snark practically writes itself, because NPR really did tweet: "A former Google software engineer says some women at the company skipped work today, upset by the leaked memo." One thing is obvious: The NPR cocoon is embarrassingly cozy if it didn't see what an easy straight line it was offering to people who support Dalmore and think he made some good points in his memo.

UPDATE 2: NPR's tweet linked to an NPR article titled "Google Reportedly Fires Employee Who Slammed Diversity Efforts." The relevant material is:

Another software engineer who used to work for Google, Kelly Ellis, says some women who still work at the company stayed home Monday because the memo made them "uncomfortable going back to work."

I wonder how Kelly Ellis knows what women in her former workplace did and why they did it. Is Kelly Ellis involved in the prospective lawsuit discussed in the previous post? We're told "Ellis said she left Google in 2014 after she was sexually harassed." ("Ellis said" — we don't know what really happened and are not told about the litigation status of this claim.)

Why did NPR speak with Kelly Ellis and why did NPR not talk to any of the women whose actions and emotions it is portraying? If I had to guess, I'd say it's because Ellis said something that NPR believed fit very nicely into the story it wanted to tell, and it either didn't bother to check more deeply or it tried and couldn't find these women but still thought the idea was too good not to use. Again, NPR is in a cocoon if it didn't see how this fact/"fact" would be used by those who want to say there's no real problem of gender discrimination in the tech industry.

I'd like to see something more than Ellis's statement to support this notion that Google women stayed home because they were "uncomfortable," but I do just want to note that Ellis gave support for my hypothesis that Damore is a scapegoat. She said his memo wasn't that different from what she saw "being shared on internal message boards and other different internal forums" when she worked at Google (which was more than 3 years ago).

UPDATE 3: I can't find anything else, and until I do — help me out if you can — I'm going to answer my question in the post title: No. It's a myth, an urban legend. I'll just front-page something I said in the comments in response to Matthew Sablan:

In NPR's defense, they're quoting/paraphrasing an ex-Google employee. So, they didn't come up with the idea on their own, just reporting what a source told them.

I said:

Why does that woman count as a source? NPR is responsible for accepting her as the sole source -- sole reported source -- of a fact about which she doesn't have first-hand knowledge. The source also has a pre-existing dispute with Google. Whether her claim of sexual harassment is true or not, she is hostile to Google and her interests are not even the same as the interests of the women whose actions and feelings she is purporting to know and express accurately.

The source bailed out of Google, so it might serve her interests to portray Google as a place other women will want to get away from, but those other women are still employed at Google, and they may not want to be seen that way. They may understand that staying out of work makes them look too emotional and safe-space-seeking.

You need to be skeptical about things that fit your template. Those who are accepting this report at face value and using it to support the idea that women really are emotional and ill-suited to a high-pressure workplace are engaging in the same kind of cocoonish behavior that we're seeing from NPR.

Hey, people of the 7 states targeted by Winter Storm Juno...

... how are you doing? Are you laying in provisions? Are you planning to survive the terrible storm?

So... I'm thinking about you, but I'm also thinking about Mayor De Blasio. I see that Twitchy is mocking him for being "in full emergency/panic mode." This is a big test of Mayor De Blasio and it could ruin him. You have to be ignorant of the history of New York City not to realize that.

Here's the Wikipedia entry for the February 1969 nor'easter:

The nor'easter developed on February 9, and as it moved towards the northeast, intensifying to become a powerful storm, it dropped paralyzing snowfall, often exceeding 20 in[ches]

....Thousands of travelers became stranded on roads and in airports. Overall, at least 94 people lost their lives to the storm....

Following the storm, then-mayor John Lindsay was criticized for not dealing with the snow adequately... The storm became known as the "Lindsay Snowstorm," and created a political crisis; as a result, Lindsay lost the Republican primary for the next mayoral election....

That was 20 inches of snow.  We're hearing predictions of 3 feet of snow.

14 minutes of income-inequality humor...

... from John Oliver...



... and 4 screens of complaining about it from Twitchy.

#EndFathersDay.

Obviously satire. with stuff like:

because spousal rape, domestic violence, child abuse, and masculinity aren't things to be celebrated #YesAllWomen #EndFathersDay

And:

Fathers Day should be renamed to Semen Day, because that's what men contribute to families. #EndFathersDay

But it led to some pretty funny Iowahawk spoofing, like:

#EndFathersDay because no man wants another pair of pleated Dockers.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) June 13, 2014

"Strongly condemn attacks in Mosul by the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (#ISIL), and its efforts to turn back clock on #Iraq's progress."

Samantha Power lets slip the hashtags of war.

Strongly condemn attacks in Mosul by the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (#ISIL), and its efforts to turn back clock on #Iraq's progress.

— Samantha Power (@AmbassadorPower) June 12, 2014

"Andrew Breitbart's ghost said it, I didn't. don't blame the messenger."

Ken Jennings stands his ground, humor-wise, against the attack of the dreaded Twitchy.

When can it work to select an actual well-known dead person as a character in your joking about dying young? Jennings is more of a quiz-show whizz than a comedy writer, and Twitter boxes everyone in with the short format and wide dissemination, so it's hard to judge from this one example, but this is a case of selecting a dead-young person by his political position to demonstrate the truth of the opposite political position, and if the joke-teller isn't someone who has and wants the comic persona of asshole, this is a bad idea.

But I do like the standing of his ground, after he made the decision to joke about the dead man Breitbart. That takes nerve, and that can be funny. Commit to comedy and don't let the first critics scare you into taking it back and apologizing. It's at this point, when the critics step up, that you have a big opportunity to say something especially funny. Prudes will always be pushing you back. They'll always want everyone to stop laughing. A man died! No one should laugh.

But laughing at death is a good move. If you can't laugh at death, life will be nothing but crying, and that would be true idiocy.

Speaking of true idiocy and commitment to comedy, I got an assist in this post from The 3 Stooges! Bonus points to the reader who can guess what question I had, writing the text above, that led me to Google and resolved my question with help from The 3 Stooges....

... who are all dead!



Oh! No!!!

UPDATE: No one wins the bonus. Answer here. 

Kathy Griffin tweets a graphic, comparing Phil Robertson and Matthew Shepard — not a victim/victim.

pic.twitter.com/5nGDM1FxWb
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) December 23, 2013

Twitchy decries the comparison mainly on the theory that Robertson committed no act of violence against gay people and also observing that "the murder of Matthew Shepard... might not have had anything to do with Shepard being gay after all, but rather with drugs."

Here's the book that came out last September examining that evidence that the murder wasn't about homosexuality but crystal meth: "The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard."

But let's take this a step deeper and compare the repression of free speech and the use of physical violence to control and oppress people. Murder — especially torture murder, like Shepard's — is a terrible crime. Is it even worse if it is a hate crime — that is, if the victim is chosen because he belongs to a group toward which the murderer feels hate? The reason it is considered worse is because of what it does to the minds of other members of the group.

We all fear crime, and if there is a lot of murder going on, it erodes our sense of well-being and may inhibit our freedom to move around town. But when the crime is hate crime, it has a disparate effect on the minds of the people, so that some are constrained and afraid more than others. That matters! In fact, spreading a false belief that a murder is a hate crime also imposes that disparate burden on members of the group that was supposedly targeted.

Hate speech similarly affects the minds of the members of the group against whom hate has been expressed, and it can produce the same kind of fear of violence that is caused by a report of a hate crime. Now, there is hate speech and there is hate speech. Think of the most virulent hate speech, and you should see how powerful it is, how justified and painful the fear is. In extreme cases, members of the targeted group should take alarm and even flee in terror. A purveyor of hate speech need not commit an act of violence to create a fear of violence. He might inspire others to commit those acts of violence, and even if he doesn't, the threat of violence alone has an effect. False reports of hate speech work the same harm.

In the set of statements that could be characterized as hate speech, what Phil Robertson said was not that bad. Many would argue for a narrow definition of hate speech such that what Phil Robertson said would not be in the set at all. Defining the category very broadly is a political and rhetorical move, and it isn't always effective. At some point — and perhaps with Robertson, we've hit that point — you're being too repressive about what can be said on issues about which decent people are still debating, and it would be better to hear each other out and remain on speaking terms.

There is more good to be achieved by talking to each other and not shunning than by treating another human being as toxic. In fact, to treat another person as toxic is to become hateful yourself. It's better to let the conversation flow, and if you really think your ideas are good, why switch to other tactics? What's the emergency? Especially when your cause — like gay rights — is for greater human freedom, you ought to resist becoming a force of repression.

Since making his controversial remark, Phil Robertson has put out the message that as a Christian he loves everyone. Love speech is the opposite of hate speech, and it has so much more to do with Christianity than the reviling of sin in the earlier remark. He wants to speak against sin, but it's a problem when you aim a remark at a kind of person who has, over the years — over the millennia — felt a threat of violence and the burden of ostracism. I think Robertson knows that.

That's what I want to say in this conversation that I think should flow on. The love is in the conversation. The conversation is an independent good, even if we never agree.

Come on, haters. Show the love.

It's Christmas Eve.

How's that healthcare.gov website working out for you?

I heard it was hinky, but it looks great from here, not that I need to use it. I've had excellent health-care insurance for decades. (The relevant promise for me is: If you like what you have, you get to keep it.) But I went over to healthcare.gov to see if it's up and running, to click on various headings, and run a bunch of searches, and it looked great. The front page came up instantly, and every link I clicked and every search I ran went through instantly. There was nothing slow or unfinished-looking about it.

But Drudge's top headline right now is "OBAMACRASH":



That links to a Twitchy article with the headline "Surprise! Obamacare health insurance exchange websites don’t work; HealthCare.gov a total mess." At that top of that Twitchy page is this blackly comical banner:



The real nightmare for the anti-Obamacare crowd will be if Obamacare works well enough and people are reasonably satisfied. Myself, I'm tired of the drama.

ADDED: "In Debut, Affordable Care Web Site Baffles Many Users," according to the NYT.

"Republicans... are a bunch of dead white people. Or dying white people."

Said the college professor, secretly videoed by a student in the back row, now playing on YouTube, linked by Twitchy.

And I say: Look out all you professors. Anything you say may be taken out of context and posted on YouTube. Your hyperbole and casual humor and reenactments of the arguments of others will look quite different as the world looks over the shoulders of the captive audience you think you're talking at. The back row is no longer the back row. There are a million more rows behind that, full of people with no motive to act like they respect you.

"Washington Post’s ‘second look at statutory rape’ click-trolling inspires #WaPoPitches."

"Is the Washington Post getting into Slate’s business of click-trolling, or do the paper’s editors really think it’s time for a national conversation on sex between teachers and underage students?"

"Jake Tapper reveals classified information about CIA in Benghazi - should his sources go to prison? Should he?"

A tweet from Glenn Greenwald, part of a collection of tweets at Twitchy under the headline "Jake Tapper: Remember when Rand Paul asked Hillary about gun running in Libya?"

(I invite your comments, which must pass through moderation. Comments must relate to the linked article.)

I'm skeptical that Twitter drives traffic to websites. But if it does, this ought to work...

What's more disgusting than late-term abortion? This scheme to exploit it by hiring actors & secretly taping doctors. wapo.st/11wBHIW

— Will Saletan (@saletan) April 29, 2013

Via Twitchy, which calls Saletan "soulless."