"Last week, Dr. El-Sayed mused in a social media post about whether the vice president would take her 'back in time to meet Papaw' if he could..."

"... referring to Mr. Vance’s deceased grandfather and seeming to imply that he would not have approved of the Vances’ interracial marriage. 'Abdul, keep my wife’s name the hell out of your mouth because she’s way out of your league,' Mr. Vance said, prompting a roar from supporters. Ms. Vance is of Indian descent. In his first memoir, 'Hillbilly Elegy,' Vance wrote that it was 'one of the great regrets of my life that Mamaw and Papaw never met' her. It wasn’t Dr. El-Sayed’s first mention of Ms. Vance. In a podcast episode in April, he accused Mr. Vance of having made his career by 'hating people who are different' and suggested that the couple’s mixed-race children would have to reckon with that fact. He also suggested that Ms. Vance, who gave birth to the couple’s fourth child in July, was not physically attracted to her husband."

From "Vance Calls El-Sayed ‘Evil’ in No-Holds-Barred Michigan Speech/Vice President JD Vance also told Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, to “keep my wife’s name the hell out of your mouth'" (NYT gift link).

I'll just add a little poll:

"The Vances’ henhouse is elevated — about two feet off the ground — and situated inside a shed that is protected from the elements...."

"The design is such that the owner does not have to walk through 'chicken droppings and chicken bedding' to tend to the birds. The keeper can access the hens via interior shed doors. The attached run is predator-proof... and includes a solid roof, which helps prevent avian flu from spreading to the flock, as it can be 'transmitted with migratory birds flying overhead'.... The [henhouse] has led to speculation that there may be political motivations behind the flock’s appearance. It’s a theory that resonates with Danny Bowers, who keeps 19 chickens on a suburban property in Utah County, Utah. Bowers, who uses they/them pronouns, points out that some conservatives have embraced the values espoused by 'trad wife' influencers, many of whom raise chickens."

I'm reading "The Vances added a chicken coop to the vice president’s residence. We had questions. Who will be raising the hens at the Naval Observatory? And why are the Vances taking on this project?" Thats a gift link, in case you want to get serious or laugh about henhousegate.

I love the sheer randomness of the pronoun preference of some guy in Utah who's got nothing to do with any of this other than that he too keeps chickens.

I'm going to assume that the reason for the chickens is to enrich the day-to-day life of the Vance's 3 — soon to be 4 — children.

It is an awfully posh henhouse. I can see why some people are envious... or trying to figure out if they should be envious:

"If the bare-chested, muscled mixed martial arts fighters of the U.F.C. match that President Trump hosted on Flag Day were the poster guys for MAGA’s image of masculinity..."

"... then the pregnant women of Trump world are one half of their feminine counterparts. Along with the sheath-clad, lip-filled, pageant-haired Mar-a-Lago set, they offer an image of idealized womanhood that gives literal shape to the pronatalist movement. 'It almost feels like a memo went out,' said Jill Filipovic, the host of the 'Week in Women' podcast. 'They have quite intentionally opted to present themselves as, "I am really pregnant, and this is what women were chosen to do," and they are happy to say that both with their looks and their mouths.' If in doubt, simply consider posts on X and Instagram last month from [Katie] Miller, who was then some nine months pregnant. 'In honor of Mother’s Day,' she wrote, 'a reminder that peak feminism is having babies. The most radical thing a woman can do is embrace her biological destiny.' Along with her words came a portrait taken from the side, in which Miller is shown wearing low-slung, unbuttoned jeans and a black sports bra, her dark hair cascading in waves down her back. Like the stretchy and black knit Milly dress with a tulip on the front worn by Usha Vance for a military mothers celebration at the White House, and the form-fitting gowns worn by Leavitt and Miller to the White House Correspondents’ dinner in April, the photograph placed Miller’s rounded stomach front and center, enshrining her pregnancy for all to see...."

The NYT fashion writer Vanessa Friedman inspects the fecund right-wing bodies in "The Politics and Power of the Pregnancy Image/Usha Vance, along with Katie Miller and Karoline Leavitt, shows how much is said by an expectant silhouette, without anyone saying a word" (NYT).

Here's how Katie induced Vanessa to propagate adjectives:

"Therapy didn’t work for you. But church does," said Usha to JD Vance.

Quoted in JD's new memoir, "Communion" (commission earned).

Did he need therapy and what's the story of its not working on him?

My traumatic childhood had made me resentful and left me with awful conflict management skills. I would overreact or withdraw—fight or flight!—over minor transgressions.... Because of Usha, I attended a few therapy sessions at the Yale student health clinic. The therapist I spoke with was a good guy, but I found therapy too uncomfortable. I didn’t like to talk to my own girlfriend about how crazy my homelife was, so why would I talk to a stranger? But there was a deeper problem with therapy as I encountered it. It was divorced from any sense of responsibility or guilt. In one session, we explored an incident that I’ve since discussed publicly: Driving with my mother on a relatively rural road, she loses her temper. She accelerates the car, threatening to crash and kill both of us.... Experts tend to describe unresolved trauma as when a person experiences “disruptive physical and emotional reactions in the present as their body and mind continue to defend against” threats they faced in the past. The gist is that my fight-or-flight response, my temper, and my general resentment about my feelings of insecurity were consequences of trauma I had experienced and hadn’t properly “processed.” And of course, part of that processing was understanding how trauma across the generations was linked. The trauma I experienced at the hand of my mother was connected to the time my grandfather got drunk and beat her. And of course, my grandfather didn’t have it easy growing up in the deep poverty of Kentucky coal country. I resisted this for a couple of reasons. The first is that the framing turned me into a victim rather than an actor.... The therapist’s framing... removed the moral dimension from human conduct.... I was searching for a more satisfying accounting of wrongdoing and responsibility. Of temptation and willpower. Of virtue and guilt.... [M]ost of all I wanted to be a better person. I wanted to be worthy of this woman I was madly in love with. And I began to fear that the past was a prologue: that whatever happened to my mother, whatever destroyed marriages and friendships in my family, would eventually destroy what I had with Usha....

"I’ve been saying for a while that the gender-neutral 'they/them' was going to become even more widespread. As a linguist..."

"... who studies the ways language changes, I noted the rise in people resisting the gender binary and got caught up in — and perhaps even biased toward — what I processed as a pronominal revolution. But surveys show that the number of young people identifying as nonbinary has decreased considerably over the past two years. Binary genders are on the rise again, and therefore so are the pronouns most closely associated with them...."

Writes John McWhorter, designating "He and she" as item #7 of the "Words and Phrases" list in his section of "The Year in Lists."

And that happens to be my last gift link of the year from The New York Times, so enjoy reading all the items on all the lists.

Jennifer Weiner has "9 Retrograde Moments for Women." I guess there were only 9, because if you'd had a 10th, wouldn't you go for the cliché of a 10 item list? And yet Weiner made a single item out of Erika Kirk and Usha Vance. Was it "retrograde" to put them together? Yes, but it wasn't Weiner's doing. Some people on the internet did it: they talked about JD Vance divorcing Usha and marrying Erika Kirk. Was that important enough to repeat? Weiner only purports to give us "moments"....

What are we seeing here? A dying party's last gasps?

Link to the London Times: here.

Excerpt: "As he told Vogue last July, 'I’m a fun, wacky guy. I’m a silly goose.' Take one look at his bizarre Instagram page... or his X account... and you’ll agree with that. Schlossberg often spends his time shirtless, talking about people’s looks. He has pondered Jesus Christ’s body type. He has commented on his own resemblance to Audrey Hepburn. He has wondered out loud whether Usha Vance is 'way hotter' than his grandmother Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.And then there’s the video he posted this week. Donning a blonde wig and speaking in a Slavic accent, he pretended to be Melania Trump as he performed a 'dramatic reading' of her recent letter to Vladimir Putin about the welfare of Ukrainian children. On Tuesday he posted again as Melania, saying he would 'be going live, answering all of your questions on my show tonight.'"

And yes, I see what Gavin Newsom is doing. Suddenly, everybody's a comedian. 

"I told them not to worry, nobody does self-deprecating better than I do."

Said Donald Trump at the Gridiron Dinner in 2018. Supposedly, there was worry that he might not be able to fit the tradition of Presidents being self-deprecating.

Last night was this year's Gridiron Dinner, and he wasn't there at all: "At Gridiron Dinner, Jokes About Trump, Musk and Russia Abound/But President Trump wasn’t around to hear any of the barbs thrown at the annual D.C. event" (NYT). I read that NYT article so you don't have to. Sounds like the NYT is also tired of it:

Even after all these years, jokes about Mr. Trump and Russia still play with the official Washington crowd. Those in the Hyatt basement, which was packed with reporters, editors, television anchors and ambassadors, laughed along.... The PBS journalist Judy Woodruff opened up the room with jokes about Mr. Musk’s fathering so many children and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s drinking....  One of the less successful acts centered on two men pretending to be the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and Mr. Schumer, the Senate minority leader, covered in leaves. “Lost in the woods” was the chorus. (“No one cares about your pronouns when you’re lost in the woods.”).... Another act had a mock Usha Vance singing about being a phony populist....

"She was spotted carrying books including The Iliad, a classic saga of male rage and refusal to accept defeat, on the campaign trail."

From "Who Is JD Vance’s Wife? Second Lady Usha Vance, Former Democrat, Steals the Inauguration Spotlight/Just after his swearing-in, Donald Trump joked that he 'would have chosen' Usha as VP—'the only one smarter than' JD Vance" (Vanity Fair).

A classic saga of male rage and refusal to accept defeat — that amused me. The boundaries of the manosphere are vast.

They say don't judge a book by its cover, but apparently it's fine to judge a person by the visible cover of any book they happen to be carrying. Remember back in May 2008 when candidate Barack Obama was photographed carrying "The Post-American World" by Fareed Zakaria? The NYT had just reviewed the book and said:

Zakaria’s is not another exercise in declinism. His point is not the demise of Gulliver, but the "rise of the rest.”...  The real problem, Zakaria argues, is the rise of China.... Authoritarian modernization just hums along. The Party’s message reads "Enrich yourselves, but leave the driving to us,” and most of 1.3 billion Chinese seem happy to comply — and to consume. With power safely lodged in the Politburo, China does not conform to the historical pattern of "first rich, then rowdy,” which led to Tokyo’s and Berlin’s imperialist careers.....

How did we read his reading? 

"How brilliant is Donald J. Trump?"

Brilliant enough to call in to a JD Vance town hall and ask "How brilliant is Donald J. Trump?"

WATCH: JD Vance is currently doing a Town Hall hosted by Chris Cuomo, and Trump surprised them with a call to ask a question

Trump: "How brilliant is Donald Trump?" 😂

Vance: "This is supposed to be for undecided voters. I would hope that I have your vote, of all people." 😂… pic.twitter.com/qvy5l0aWlX

— George (@BehizyTweets) October 25, 2024

And speaking of how women feel about politics, let's hear from Mika Brzezinski:

It's finally happened. Mika has *SNAPPED* live on airpic.twitter.com/EeiNzwopeb

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) October 24, 2024

She's so earnest — or phony-earnest — about wanting women to wake up and start paying attention, but I've been paying attention every day, and I didn't think one thing in her parade of horribles was true.

You know, I said a long time ago that I thought the Democrats should put aside all the Trump-is-evil theatrics and simply engage with him on the substantive merits... if they can. Maybe they know that would be the better strategy but they lack the material to fight on the merits.

ADDED: I'm trying to find old posts of mine where I begged Democrats to fight on the substantive merits, and the first thing that turned up, from December 14, 2023, was "Predicted Electoral College vote: 312 Trump, 226 Biden" ("Here's the Electoral College interactive map, where I generated the numbers used in my post title").

I invite you to look at the Real Clear Politics "No Toss-Ups" Electoral College map right now:

I got it right on the nose! 312 to 226. 

And here's what I wrote last December:

The demonization of Trump has not worked for Democrats. I think Glenn Greenwald put it aptly (reacting to the polls I've displayed above): 

"The more Trump is indicted, the more he rises in the polls. That correlation doesn't prove causation, but what it does prove is that most Americans have so much distrust in the justice system and DOJ that even felony indictments don't undermine Trump's standing with the public."

My advice, not that I think Democrats would or even could follow it: Fight Trump on the substantive merits of the issues. Show us that you deserve the power you seek.

I was right all the way down to the prediction that they wouldn't do it and the belief — which I still hold — that they couldn't do it even if they wanted.

If you had to take the over/under on Trump 312/Harris 226, you'd take the over.

"Usha and J.D. made a memorable pair. The legal writer David Lat remembers attending a poker night with the couple in 2011..."

"... at the neo-Gothic home of [Amy] Chua and her husband, fellow Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld.... At the time, Chua was mainly known for her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a gaily provocative paean to achievement-oriented parenting. Chua was a kind of den mother to certain student protégés, known on campus as 'Chua pets,' and J.D. was central among them. According to another former friend of the pair, Chua was not a fan of Usha. 'Probably because she didn’t engage in her bullshit,' the former friend said. 'You have to gossip and drink. J.D. loved that shit.' Usha did not. Lat happened to ride the Metro-North up from New York for the poker game with the soon-to-be Vances. He told his husband later that night that they’d reminded him of another famous Yale Law couple, Bill and Hillary Clinton. 'They had a kind of energy to them,' Lat said. 'They seemed very confident and successful. One thing that struck me as Hillary-esque was that Usha seemed to have more polish than J.D.'"

From "What Is Usha Vance Thinking? The veep candidate’s wife is the child of immigrants, a former Democrat, a highly skilled lawyer — and a total mystery" (NY Magazine).

"Once I thought Trump would be an aberration for Republicans. But on Tuesday night, I saw the future of the party and it was lies piled on lies, and darkness swallowing darkness."

Maureen Dowd watched the VP debate and describes how she felt about it, in "JD Smirks His Way Into the Future" (NYT).

Vance seemed like a replicant. There was no sign of the smarmy right-wing troll who said Harris “can go to hell”....

When did Vance say Harris "can go to hell"? I don't remember, and we're not given a link. Earlier in the column Dowd goes on about a Trump ad and fails to give a link. I found that frustrating but I figured she (and the NYT) did not want to boost a Trump ad. But why can't we get the context for that "can go to hell"? It makes me assume that the context would make Vance look better. (I looked it up — here — and it does.)

Back to Dowd:

He has a bizarre, degrading view of the role of women in American society.

Again, no context. 

But on Tuesday night, he put on a mask of likability and empathy.

"She looked like someone who had other things on her mind than dress... and wasn’t all that interested in devoting a big chunk of time to catering to the male gaze."

"You could imagine her before the event, looking at her closet and exercising her own judgment about what seemed right.... ... Ms. Vance’s first appearance at the convention on Monday, in a taupe dress that practically disappeared into the background and flat shoes, was so counter to the prevailing Trump aesthetic that it was startling.... The rare photos of her until now suggest someone who isn’t particularly interested in using her clothes to attract attention, but rather to effectively get her through the day.... As she stepped into her role as a potential second lady... [s]he arrived as herself. That may seem minor, but in a campaign that prizes the visual message and is trying to position itself as a broader tent, one in which her husband’s political consistency is under scrutiny, it is a statement in itself...."

Writes Vanessa Friedman, in "Usha Vance and the Iconography of the Trump Women/The potential second lady models a new kind of Republican image-making" (NYT).

When I started reading this essay, I thought Friedman would go negative, but I don't think she did... other than in a part I didn't include above, about how "Trump women" all have "a certain kind of look... a defining gender trope" with "a lot of hair, often left to cascade in glossy, carefully controlled Breck girl waves" and a ton of makeup. I've never liked that look and wish it would go away, so I liked Friedman's appreciation of Usha Vance's relatively natural look.

Here's video of Usha Vance introducing her husband at the convention last night. The hair over the eye in the beginning was a huge distraction, and I was quite relieved when, after a cut to the audience, it had moved behind her ear.