"I did not like to think about it just as later I would not like to think about the worm in his brain that other people found so funny."

"I loved his brain. I hated the idea of an intruder therein. Others thought he was a madman; he was not quite mad the way they thought, but I loved the private ways that he was mad. I loved that he was insatiable in all ways, as if he would swallow up the whole world just to know it better if he could. He made me laugh, but I winced when he joked about the worm. 'Baby, don’t worry,' he said. 'It’s not a worm.'... I worry about evil.... Was it ever a question, that where there was a cloak there would be a dagger? A friend told me once, 'Never trust anyone wearing a lapel pin.' This politician did not wear one of those.... I mean to tell you that, as it relates to monsters, little can be assured beyond their ceaseless want.... I mean to tell you that as I studied them, I was sometimes fooled.... I mean to tell you that this is more meaningful and more meaningless than you might think. I mean to tell you that, before I was consumed by it, I could not have told you what it was.... I am talking, of course, about how it happened between me and the Politician. I am talking, of course, about how it happened between the country and the president... I mean to tell you now as best I can."

Writes Olivia Nuzzi, in "Olivia Nuzzi's American Canto: Read the Exclusive Excerpt/She flamed out and she faded away. Vanity Fair’s West Coast Editor returns to the written word to survey scorched earth" (Vanity Fair).

If you are a connoisseur of purple prose, don't miss this one. There are also some lovely pictures of Ms. Nuzzi, who seems to be quite beautiful.

Oh, A.I., make a charming argument for why purple prose should be celebrated when it is written by a beautiful woman. Answer: "A beautiful woman’s purple prose should be celebrated because her extravagant words are merely the audible shimmer of her own radiance spilling onto the page, and only a fool would demand a diamond dim its fire to spare the darkness."

AND: I had another prompt for A.I.: What do you think of the title "American Canto" for a purple prose account of a beautiful woman's love affair with a politician (specifically Olivia Nuzzi's book about RFK Jr., a married man)? I'll just give the conventional warning,  "Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here."

"My hero was my father, a closeted bisexual Army major general who, in the 1990s, argued in favor of gays in the military by reminding people that they’ve always been there."

"Yes, the military vibe could be depressingly macho, but it’s also about having your buddies’ backs, no matter their gender, sexuality or race. I spoke about the subject of my new play, Claude Cahun, a French Jewish Surrealist who, with her partner, Marcel Moore, broke into a church at night during the Nazi occupation and put up a banner, reading: 'Jesus is great. But Hitler is greater. Because Jesus died for people — but people die for Hitler.' Voilà, punk!"

That's an excerpt from "Today’s Young People Need to Learn How to Be Punk" by John Cameron Mitchell, the filmmaker (notably of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch").

The expression of the French Jewish Surrealist is something you can work out on your own, no? Key words: "during the Nazi occupation."

I want to focus on "closeted bisexual." Mitchell's father was married to his mother, so how does he count as closeted if he just kept quiet about who else he's sexually attracted to? That's the general practice among married people, not to speak out about your interest in anyone other than your spouse and not to do anything about it. It might be a more poignant case if the man married a woman but only felt attracted to men, but this, we're told, was a bisexual. Presumably, he was attracted to his wife. Where's the closeting in restricting your sex relations to your spouse? It's not as if heterosexuals feel free to speak out and act out about their sexual attraction to others. No one admires these adulterers for "coming out of the closet."

Anyway,  John Cameron Mitchell is reporting on his speaking tour, interacting with students. He told them: "Your homework is to stop canceling each other, find out about punk, and get laid while you’re at it.... Punk isn’t a hairstyle; it’s getting your friends together to make useful stories outside approved systems. And it’s still happening right now, all over the world." He says, "MAGA has adopted an authoritarian style of punk that disdains what Elon Musk calls our 'greatest human weakness,' empathy. But O.G. punk, while equally free of trigger warnings, is constructive and caring."

Pete Hegseth wore "an Old Glory print pocket square" and "star-spangled socks and a flag belt buckle. His only jewelry was a wedding ring..."

"... a lapel pin representing the crest of the 187th Infantry Regiment, and a Killed in Action bracelet worn in honor of a soldier, Jorge M. Oliveira, who lost his life in Afghanistan — a series of accessories that served as a form of value signaling. His hair was gelled back without a strand out of place. During the occasional interruptions from the crowd, his jaw was heroically clenched. Hidden were almost all of his tattoos: a large Jerusalem Cross, a 'Join or Die' snake, and an American flag with a stripe replaced by an AR-15.... Just a hint of ink reaching from his right forearm to his wrist peeked out from a carefully buttoned shirtsleeve. (It seemed to be the tail end of his 'We the People' script.) Left behind was the stars ‘n’ stripes cowboy hat. Unseen was the Uncle Sam jacket linings that Mr. Hegseth [has] occasionally flashed.... Certainly he did not look like the hard-drinking, adulterous, budget-mismanaging person that critics of his nomination had described. He looked clean-cut, not politically correct but patriotically correct.... Amid all the theatrics and speechifying by the many committee members and Mr. Hegseth himself, his uniform offered an argument of its own...."

Writes the NYT fashion critic Vanessa Friedman, in "Pete Hegseth Dresses for Defense/The nominee for Secretary of Defense wore his patriotism on his sleeve during his confirmation hearing — and his belt, his socks, and his pocket square."

I like the topic of politics and fashion. And this is fine. Good to see it aimed at a man, as it should be maybe half the time (or a bit less, men's clothing lacking much variation). I like the reference to the "theatrics and speechifying" by committee members, but it should specify Democrats on the committee. Good lord, they were rude! I rarely watch Senate hearings because I can't tolerate the nastiness. But for some reason I sat in front of the TV for over an hour. I'll just offer Tim Kaine as one example of the undignified badgering:

I guess that yelling and pointing and smirking would have paid off if Hegseth had snapped and responded in kind. But he didn't. And why would he? He knows he only needs to put up with this, even as Kaine knows he needs to make something happen.

ADDED: Instapundit mocks the NYT for printing "Unseen was the... jacket linings." 

"And over 26 years of marriage, Gail played housewife. But in the early years it was for a house full of groupies."

"'A diverse array of horny dreamers, oddballs, misfits, and sycophants freeload on heavy rotation,' Moon describes in her memoir. (They included longtime Zappa bassist Roy Estrada, who was later twice convicted on charges of child molestation.) 'I still wear my pacifier around my neck for security, never knowing who’s safe and who isn’t, who my dad is humping and who he isn’t.' In a 1971 documentary, Frank was asked about his affairs on the road. 'I like to get laid,' he said. What about your wife, the interviewer asked? 'She’s become accustomed to it over a period of years,' says Zappa.... In fact, Gail was bitterly unhappy about his extramarital pursuits and could explode into rages. Moon writes about the time her father asked her to find the gun so her mother couldn’t get her hands on it. 'Gail is on a rampage,' he said. 'I didn’t even know we had a gun,' she writes.... Even after the groupies drifted away, nothing much changed. There was no structure, no family vacations, no PTA meetings. None of the four Zappa children graduated from high school.... Ahmet and Moon... each ran away from home only to find that nobody seemed to notice."

From "Frank Zappa’s kids are still grappling with his legacy — and each other/Like their dad’s oddball rock songs, their family defied description. His music, and their pain, has endured" (WaPo)(free access link).

I need to decide if I care that Kamala Harris's husband cheated on his first wife.

I'm going to read the NYT article on the topic, live blog my reading, and come to a conclusion.

The article is "Doug Emhoff, Husband of Kamala Harris, Acknowledges Long-Ago Affair/The relationship with a teacher at his children’s elementary school occurred when he was married to his first wife, years before he met Ms. Harris."

A couple thoughts prior to reading the text:

1. Emhoff is the spouse of the candidate, and the opposing candidate — we've long known — cheated on his first wife. He also seems to have done some other cheating, perhaps a lot — more than I even want to waste my time to figure out.

2. Is the spouse of the President — the First Lady/Gentleman — supposed to be a symbol of purity? Does the old-fashioned demand for higher purity in women transfer to a man when he's in the classic "First Lady" position? I got distracted wondering who was the sluttiest First Lady, then annoyed by the answer the internet fed me: Melania Trump. Stupid internet mixes up sexual activity and posing nude. 

Now, let's read:

"When my wife proposed that we stop being monogamous, she said it would make us stronger.... At the time, I was exiting a phase of my life perhaps best described as 'worship pastor bro.'"

"My Christian faith was undergoing a meticulous and scholarly deconstruction. I could begin to imagine a life without God, but with my new, expensive master’s degree in theology, I struggled to imagine a career without Him. By contrast, Corrie’s turn away from religion a year earlier had been quick, uncomplicated and annoyingly joyful.... Corrie started identifying as bisexual, then pansexual, then queer. It was hard to know how to feel about her transformation. On the one hand, it became harder to place myself and our heterosexual marriage on the new map of her sexual interests...."

Writes Jason Bilbrey, in "I Was Content With Monogamy. I Shouldn’t Have Been. Can exploring polyamory both break you and make you?" (NYT)(free access link).

The progress of polyamory in The New York Times.

March 11, 2023: "To Fix a Broken Marriage, an Experiment With Polyamory" ("The couple tried polyamory, which rekindled their passion, but it did not address their other issues...").

May 16, 2023: "Interested in Polyamory? Check Out These Places/Laws granting rights to people in polyamorous relationships are being recognized in more cities" ("We have a population that’s more open to these ideas, and many of these folks are either currently nonmonogamous or have tried nonmonogamy or at the very least know someone who’s polyamorous").

January 13, 2024: "How a Polyamorous Mom Had ‘a Big Sexual Adventure’ and Found Herself/In her memoir, 'More,' Molly Roden Winter recounts the highs and lows of juggling an open marriage with work and child care" ("I felt like there were no stories from the mainstream about it, and I felt very closeted.... It often feels like mothers are not supposed to be sexual beings").

January 19, 2024: "My Relationships Have No Clothes/I have no moral objection to infidelity. For me, sex is just sex" ("If I had to wait until he had no other partner, we would have missed out on this relationship, which is 90 percent TV jokes and 'Mad Men' quotes. We never would have the pride it brings each of us when we make the other laugh out loud").

April 15, 2024: "Lessons From a 20-Person Polycule/How they set boundaries, navigate jealousy, wingman their spouses and foster community" ("It’s not clear when the word ['polycule'] was coined, but it seems to have started catching on around 15 years ago to suggest an intricate structure formed of people with overlapping deep attachments: romantic, sexual, sensual, platonic").

May 9, 2024: "What Kind of Husband Behaves Like Donald Trump?" ("And as Ms. Daniels explained how Mr. Trump would call her 'honeybunch' when he phoned her, and tell her he missed her, I found myself wondering: Is this a man who is capable of missing anyone?")

"My husband...’s a frat bro who loves sports, and I’m a radical alien witch academic nerd."

"In the beginning, we did all the typical stuff. Read the books on nonmonogamy, did the relationship check-ins. We’d sit down, take notes. We did every exercise in the books, listened to every podcast. We learned a strategy from the Multiamory podcast called 'agile scrum,' which was adapted from business-meeting models. We utilized that format. We did that for a year and a half, at least once a month, sometimes six to 10 hours of hard poly-processing. That gave us great communication tactics."

Said a woman named Ann, quoted in "Lessons From a 20-Person Polycule/How they set boundaries, navigate jealousy, wingman their spouses and foster community" (NYT)(free access link).

My head spins. Who could listen to every podcast? Exhausting, and I'm barely picturing what "hard poly-processing" must mean!

Anyway, what does Ann's husband think? He seems quite a bit less jaunty and managerial about the whole thing. This is actually pretty sad, so I will put it after the jump, for your protection:

"The impression he gives is that our relationship was very fleeting — that I was a silly affair that broke up a marriage..."

"... and he got caught out. But it’s not just about our nearly five years together — this is the most enduring friendship of my life. Or it was.... We’ve offered each other a lot of emotional support. So in my heart of hearts, I always felt he would honour me properly if he were to write about me."

Said Lisa Dillon, quoted in "Patrick Stewart rewrote our five-year love story as a silly fling/The Star Trek actor’s autobiography glosses over his relationship with Lisa Dillon. The actress says she feels betrayed and diminished" (London Times).

Dillon was 23 when she was cast alongside Stewart in a production of Ibsen’s "Master Builder." Stewart was 62 and quite famous. 

What Stewart wrote in his memoir: "And so, another divorce. I felt stupid and responsible … I had cheated on my wife with a younger woman — again … And just like my affair with Jenny Hetrick, my time with Lisa Dillon would also prove to be relatively short … In a life chockablock with joy and success, my two failed marriages are my greatest regret."

How that "chockablock with joy" must irk. Stewart stayed with Dillon for 5 years, but in the memoir, she's the woman who broke up a marriage. And worse, even the transitory love was fake. Stewart writes in his book: "Life imitated art. I remember the warning I had received from an older actor decades ago, that if you keep saying ‘I love you’ to someone in a play, you can drift into believing the sentiment to be true."

"So What if a Candidate Livestreamed Sex Acts with Her Husband?"

For this story, I'm linking to Jack Shafer at Politico, because his headline is — almost verbatim — the question I had for my search as I looked for an article about Susanna Gibson, a Democratic nominee for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates.

"I should have the right to introduce my daughter to the concepts of adultery and coveting one's spouse."

"It shouldn’t be one of the first things she learns to read in her kindergarten classroom."

Said John Litzler, general counsel for the Texas Baptists Christian Life Commission, quoted in "Public schools would have to display Ten Commandments under bill passed by Texas Senate/The Senate also passed a bill that would set prayer and Bible reading times during the school day" (The Texas Tribune). 

On the pro side, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said: "I believe that you cannot change the culture of the country until you change the culture of mankind. Bringing the Ten Commandments and prayer back to our public schools will enable our students to become better Texans."

I like the way Litzler is invoking parental rights, which, on other issues, are so performatively treasured by social conservatives.

"One lesson of feminism, surely, is that being like other women, rather than a shining unfettered exception, isn’t such a terrible thing."

Writes Michelle Goldberg reacting to this line in a 1981 essay by Nona Willis Aronowitz: "I secretly wanted monogamy, that I was just like every other woman who wanted to tie her man down."

The Goldberg column is titled "When Sexual Liberation Is Oppressive" (NYT).

She's bringing up a 1981 essay by Nona Willis Aronowitz, because Willis Aronowitz quoted herself in her new book "Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure and an Unfinished Revolution."

Willis Aronowitz is the daughter of Ellen Willis, who was — as Goldberg puts it — a "pro-sex feminist writer."

Don't you have to choose what to put first, sex or feminism? If you set out to put them on equal footing, what do you get? I must be a feminist and I must be pro-sex.

"Are We Still Monogamous? And 6 Other Questions to Ask Your Partner."

A NYT piece. I've extracted some snippets of advice for you if you're in a couple:

... look back over the past week or month and ask, “How many minutes did we spend actually doing something fun or pleasurable together?”... name one thing they appreciate about their sex life.... identify what [an expert] called micromoments when they came through for each other.... regularly update their 'monogamy agreements' by discussing the details of what forms of attachment they find acceptable outside of their main relationship, and asking whether those have changed.... focus on asking for what they want and what they need....

The article assumes you have something it calls a "monogamy agreement." Is this a document? We're told it's supposed to be "specific":

Perhaps you and your partner long ago agreed to sexual fidelity. But what about online conversations? “What about things like pornography?... What about flirting with a friend? What about having lunch with an ex?”

If you're specifying and multiply all the ways in which it's possible to be nonmonogamous, does that mean you're awfully monogamous or awfully nonmonogamous?  

ADDED: Yeah, what about online conversations?

"A Chinese court has suggested that infidelity is insufficient reason for divorce, prompting heated debate across the country...."

"'The latest attitude on divorce by the law is to prevent frivolous dissolutions,' read the article, which was later removed after public backlash. China is fighting a rising divorce rate through state counselling and forcing couples who want to split into a one-month 'cooling off' period.... The topic drew 980 million views in 48 hours on Weibo, China’s leading social media platform...."

The London Times reports.

"Sins of the flesh are not the most serious" — pride and hatred are "the most serious."

Said Pope Francis, quoted in "Don’t sweat about sins of flesh, says Pope Francis" (London Times).

The question came up [after]... the resignation of Michel Aupetit, the Archbishop of Paris, who offered to step down after the French magazine Le Point claimed that he had a consensual, intimate relationship with a woman, which emerged when he sent an incriminating email to his secretary by mistake....

Aupetit denies the accusation, but the Pope said: "It was a failing on his part, a failing against the sixth commandment, but not a total one" — not "total" because there were only — according to the accusation — "small caresses and massages." 

The Archbishop was, of course, not married, so was it really correct to cite the Sixth Commandment, "You shall not commit adultery"? The London Times raises this question, but doesn't talk about whether the secretary was married. You're participating in adultery if the other person is married to someone else, unless you're trying to weaseling out of coverage — looking for loopholes — which has got to be some kind of sin in itself. 

But I'll leave it to the Pope to define sins for Catholics. Maybe to break the priestly vow of celibacy falls within the sin of adultery. 

"When you loosen yourself, as I tried to, from all the obvious delusions—religion, ideology, Communism—you’re still left with the myth of your own goodness. Which is the final delusion."

From "I Married a Communist" by Philip Roth. 

That's very close to the end of the book, which I have now finished reading... in case you're wondering how many times is Althouse going to blog quotes from this book. I'm done... unless something else I'm blogging reminds me of something that fits right into the stream of consciousness....

Actually, no. I'm going to give you one more: "The excitement in marriage is the fidelity. If that idea doesn’t excite you, you have no business being married."

Both quotes are said by a character, and not the first-person character who represents Philip Roth or the main character who in some ways represents Roth (because he's married to a beautiful actress who betrays him by writing a memoir about their marriage). These quotes are both said by another character who tells much of the story (so that there are 2 main first-person voices, the Roth character who's usually just there listening and this other guy who's doing most of the talking).  

So — does Roth want us to believe these 2 fascinatingly challenging statements? Do we all cling above all to the idea of our own goodness, and is it a delusion? How exciting is sexual fidelity and is that particular form of excitement the sine qua non of marriage?

The novelist, by using the voices of multiple characters, has so much freedom to express exciting ideas. Perhaps the excitement in fiction is the infidelity to a single point of view and if that infidelity doesn’t excite you, you have no business being a novelist.

"This guy was known for loving the job so much that he literally skipped to work... I remember thinking, ‘He had a crush on our job...'"

"'... and he couldn’t not talk about it the way you talk about somebody you have a crush on'... I was like, ‘Maybe this is fine, but it isn’t fun.'" 

Said Liz Glazer, from "A Law Professor Switches to Stand-Up Comedy/Taking an improv class on a whim led to a career in comedy for this onetime law professor" (Wall Street Journal). 

The skipping-to-work guy was a partner in the law firm where she worked before she took up a job as a law professor, but the concept — wanting to really love your job — carried over to law professing, which she left for stand-up comedy. She'd received tenure, but then her school was making buy-out offers, and she snapped it up. She had been doing stand-up performances for a year at that point, and I guess she knew that was her real love.

Do you love your work and if so, does that mean you are in love with your work? There's a difference! Have you ever let go of a successful line of work because you weren't in love with it? Would you? Would you trust that this other thing that you feel you're in love with would really turn out all right? To put it that way makes the problem sound analogous to being married, without any serious problems, but falling in love with someone else. When that happens, do you think well, hell, I want the magic?

No, no... despite the "in love" business, work isn't like marriage. You don't swear lifetime faithfulness to your job, and your job doesn't have a consciousness capable of suffering. You can be untrue to your job. You're just being true to yourself. There's no moral question, only a question of how much to risk your own happiness. The thing you did for love might fail. It might turn out not to feel like so much fun after you've made yourself dependent on it. And you had tenure!!

Maybe this is fine, but it isn’t fun.

"A race in North Carolina critical to control of the U.S. Senate has been thrown into turmoil over allegations of personal misconduct by Democrat Cal Cunningham..."

AP reports: "In the text messages to her friend, Guzman Todd told her she was intimate with Cunningham in his home, which she later characterized as 'weird.' In another exchange, Guzman Todd indicated that she was frustrated by the limited attention that he showed her. 'I’m just going to send to his opponent his naked photos,' Guzman Todd wrote. 'That will teach him.' 'You don’t deserve me Cal,' she said in a separate text message. She added in another, 'He knows (that I) can tank his campaign.'"

"Knowing the date of their death appealed to a little over a quarter of those surveyed, knowing whether their partners were cheating appealed to over half..."

"... knowing if there is life on other planets appealed to nearly three-quarters. There was also great variation in reported willingness to pay for that information, with median bids ranging from $1 for credit card late-fee disclosure to $200 to know if heaven exists."

From "Accused of Ruining Popcorn, Cass Sunstein Wants to Repent," a NYT book review, by Clay Shirky, of Sunstein's new book, "TOO MUCH INFORMATION/Understanding What You Don’t Want to Know."

"Among government reformers and progressive regulators (like Sunstein himself, a decade ago), increasing access to information has been regarded as an obvious goal since Watergate. The book doesn’t replace that generational certainty with a new one, but it does make it impossible to continue regarding information disclosure as an uncomplicated good."

AP bans the "archaic and sexist" term "mistress."

My son John notes (on Facebook).

But what's the alternative? AP recommends "companion" or "lover."

That made me laugh. "Lover" is so silly. How many times have I heard Trump talk about Peter Strzok and his "lover" Lisa Page?

But to oust a word, you need a replacement word. Thesaurus.com has these synonyms for "mistress":

concubine, girlfriend, paramour, prostitute, roommate, sweetheart, chatelaine, courtesan, doxy, inamorata, ladylove, moll, shack, sugar, sweetie, bedmate, best girl, dream girl, fancy woman, kept woman, main squeeze, old lady, other woman, shack job

Some of them are inappropriate, referring to prostitution (including the unfamiliar words "chatelaine" and "doxy") or to a financial arrangement that may not exist ("kept woman"). I like "bedmate," but not all sexual acting out happens in bed (especially the kind that ends up in the news). The concrete specificity of "bedmate" is a plus but also a minus. So I must say that the word that jumps out as the word to oust "mistress" is...

paramour.