"I said, 'Be careful that old man is really a commie...'"

Said SteveR in the comments to yesterday's post about the very effective Bernie Sanders ad that uses the brilliant Simon & Garfunkel song "America." The ad only uses the first verse:

Let us be lovers,
We'll marry our fortunes together.
I've got some real estate
Here in my bag.

It's funny, because you can't have real estate in your bag, so the speaker is either a huckster — not a good image for a politician — or, most likely, a poor guy comically conveying the fact that he's got nothing, so his offer to "marry fortunes" is, we realize, early on, nothing but the proposed love. The lyrics have to stop there because the next line is "So we bought a pack of cigarettes," and no one's going to be smoking in a political ad. But if we were to keep going, we learn that the man is on the bus with his girlfriend, Kathy, and to pass the time they are "playing games with the faces"...

She said the man in the gabardine suit
Was a spy.
I said, "Be careful,
His bow tie is really a camera."

Hence SteveR's "I said, 'Be careful that old man is really a commie...'"

If we go on with the song we get to the most evocative lines:

"Kathy, I'm lost", I said,
Though I knew she was sleeping.
"I'm empty and aching and
I don't know why."

In the comments, Meade quotes that and adds:

Then Kathy woke up and looked out the window.
Alarmed when she realized where we were.
"Art" she said,
Though she knew my name is Simon.
"We're somewhere near Greece!
Why didn't you wake me up?
We should never have made that left turn back there.
We need to make America great again!"

Mrs Whatsit drew attention to the same "Kathy, I'm lost" passage:

That song is an awful choice for a political campaign. It's not about hope and promise. It's about looking for America and not finding it.

The lovers hop on the bus hopefully enough, but by the end they're out of cigarettes and out of things to talk about, and she's flipping through a magazine rather than looking out the window at the country rolling by. Last verse:

Cathy, I'm lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and I'm aching and I don't know why
Countin' the cars on the New Jersey turnpike
They've all come to look for America, all come to look for America

A sad, superannuated song for a sad, superannuated candidate.

Ah, but that's why I like it. There's this deep feeling we have about America. It makes sense to speak of looking for it, longing for it. Obviously, we are right here in America, so what's to look for? But that obviousness is obtuse. We understand the idea of looking for America, finding the real, more essential, more beautiful America, the America that fulfills our dreams and lives up to our ideals. Donald Trump says "Make America great again," as if there's one America and sometimes it's good and it can go bad and it can become great again. But another, more poetic way to put that would be "Make America America again" or "We'll find our way back to America."  I don't recommend that as a slogan for Trump. Too easy to call him reactionary and racist. But you see my point: Americans understand the idea of searching for America: We've all come to look for America.

Now, bagoh20 said, referring to the point in the ad when we see lots of faces in tiny squares:

Oh man, the dinosaurs are swooning. Lets all do a little more Baby Boomer damage before we go. If you want socialism, you specifically, and adamantly don't want America, but there are many places to go join the Borg - the huge cube of faces, all equally too small to see, drab, helpless and dependent. Please leave us individuals a home on this planet not ruined by guilt, fear, and sloth.

I said, Be careful that old man is really a commie....

"The doctors told a story of a married man who got a transplant, and whose wife had a parrot."

"They told them the parrot had to go. The wife refused. The guy caught an avian infection and died after going home. I don't know if that was premeditated or not, but the story sent home the message. So, I had all my bird stuff taken down and cleaned up, and I avoided gardening and playing in my pond for a while...."

Also: "While we are on the subject of grossity and contact with it, I have a suggestion for dog owners...."

AND: Thanks to bagoh20 for the parrot story. Click on the link for the whole thing.

"Julien Fédon, a mixed race owner of the Belvedere estate in the St. John Parish, launched a rebellion against British rule on the night of 2nd March 1795..."

"... with coordinated attacks on the towns of Grenville, La Baye and Gouyave. Fédon was clearly influenced by the ideas emerging from the French Revolution..."

... especially the Convention's abolition of slavery in 1794: he stated that he intended to make Grenada a "Black Republic just like Haiti." Fédon and his troops controlled all of Grenada except the parish of St George's, the seat of government, between March 1795 and June 1796. During those insurgent months 14,000 of Grenada's 28,000 slaves joined the revolutionary forces in order to write their own emancipation and transform themselves into "citizens"; some 7,000 of these self-liberated slaves would perish in the name of freedom. Fédon's forces were defeated by the British in late 1796, but Fédon himself was never caught and his fate is unknown.

Grenada is the next "History of" country, as we resume our alphabetical progression the the "History of" Wikipedia pages for the 206 countries of the world.



IN THE COMMENTS: bagoh20 said: "Is that outfit ever appropriate in Grenada near the equator?" And Anniella said: "That's an amazing painting, but there's a very good reason he's so bundled up," linking here.

In 1819, Charles Willson Peale headed down to Washington to paint portraits of President James Monroe, Henry Clay, and other dignitaries for exhibition in the famed Peale museum located in Independence Hall. But there was another sitter the painter wanted to snare on his trip.

"I heard of a Negro who is living in Georgetown said to be 140 years of age," Peale wrote in his diary. "He is comfortable in his Situation having Bank stock and lives in his own house."

The man was Yarrow Mamout, a free African, a Muslim who indeed held bank stock, purchased with great effort to secure a comfortable old age - after a life of abduction and bondage...

So... it's not Julien Fédon. I had my doubts, and I won't take advantage of the lame excuse — though I thought of it when I decided to use that picture — that I never actually say that's Julien Fédon. I'm glad to hear of Yarrow Mamout and I love the painting.

"Yarrow owns a house & lotts and is known by most of the Inhabitants of Georgetown & particularly by the Boys who are often teazing him which he takes in good humour," Peale confided in his diary. "The acquaintance of him often banter him about eating Bacon and drinking Whiskey - but Yarrow says it is no good to eat Hog - & drink whiskey is very bad."

"Karma's a bitch."/"But I still love her, because she's always there for me."

Said bagoh20 (responding to me) in comments in to "This is where I will employ the term 'Althousenfreude.'"

That made me say out loud, "I bet there are a lot of girls named 'Karma' now."

I found the old Name Voyager too, and here's Karma — a name that peaked in 2009 with 89 per 1 million babies.

Who would name their child Karma? For insight, consider the the brother and sister names from families with a girl named Karma:

Camron Carmelo Jaxson Kelvin Mauel Memphis Noah Orion Phillip Regulo Roanin Robert Sean Zavior

Graciela Honey Jerry Juniper Katrina Kirra Na'yzia Narida Sophia Voj Zia

Peaked in 2009... goes with the sister name Katrina... ?!! And here are the twins: Karma and Katrina. They look like trouble!

Personal experiences with the name Karma:

Karma is my first name, and in my experience, no one says it right, no on spells it right and everyone feels the need to comment on it - which gets VERY annoying VERY quickly.

Try one of the nicknames: Karms, Kaz, Tarmie, Kar-Kar....

Car car...

Michelle and Barack Obama look great in the Inauguration morning outfits.

Very nice. Love the blue. Love the matching clasped hands as — we're told — they approach the Episcopal Church. Michelle's checker-patterned coat is made of "silk jacquard based on a necktie fabric." Beautiful!

In church:

... Pastor Andy Stanley from North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Ga., delivered the sermon. He spoke of Jesus washing his disciples' feet and saying "now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you should also watch each other's feet." The president, Pastor Stanley said, should follow that example and "leverage" his power for the benefit of others.

IN THE COMMENTS: Erika notes the typo in the blocked quote, which is from NPR.org:  You should also watch each other's feet. Maybe NPR misheard and didn't get what Jesus was supposedly doing. Some commenters thought Pastor Stanley didn't get what Jesus meant.

Palladian: "The washing of the feet was about humility and service, not about 'leveraging power.'"

Cheryl: "I'm pretty sure Jesus didn't need to leverage his power. Biblical teaching like this is why we don't attend Pastor Stanley's church, which is right down the road from us."

Bago20 reacted: "Nooooooooooooooooooooo! Please don't help anymore."

Maguro had a different problem: "I find it disturbing that even southern preachers are using 'leverage' as a verb these days."

MORE IN THE COMMENTS: I said: "The humble servant image is a little edgy when the President is black." And Palladian said: "The humble servant image is a little edgy when the President is a profligate, arrogant, narcissistic asshole."

What Petraeus needs to do to get his reputation back.

This is a topic for brainstorming. Meade and I are talking about it after reading a provocative comment in the "Did Petraeus lie" thread. Bagoh20 said:

I'm not interested in all this mental masturbation, but it continues to amaze me how many people will sacrifice every principle for Obama, man who has lied to them repeatedly and come up short on every bit of promise. He's gonna need to perform a few miracles, be crucified, and rise from the dead to deserve it. How many journalist, pundits, and regular folks have fallen far and hard. People, who confronted with their hypocrisy and lack of discernment, now just shrug, [are] willing accept what would have been repugnant just a few years ago. I have lost respect for so many. I hope Petraeus does not turn out to be a disciple as well. We could use a clear-headed Judas about now.

Judas has a bad reputation, but having put the familiar Jesus template on Obama, we see why bagoh20 used Judas as the model. He's saying Obama needs a betrayer, and the name Judas also evokes the word "betrayal," a word so strongly associated with General Petraeus, notoriously called General Betray Us.

But Petraeus is already dishonored and exiled. You have to betray from the inside. You have to sacrifice something valuable to yourself to build a reputation through disloyalty. As an outsider, you've got a motive to bad-mouth those who ousted you. It's hard to get credit for taking revenge.

Still, Petraeus knows what he knows, and he can be a truthteller. I think there is a path to prestige through loyalty to the truth. He has begun to take that path by openly confessing to adultery — which is a disloyalty to his wife but a truthtelling. Compare Bill Clinton's early engagement with his Lewinsky problems: He lied. But Petraeus is caught up in lies. He lied about the adultery before he confessed. And he seems to have lied to the House Intelligence Committee about Benghazi.

It's a hard path to prestige through truthtelling, but what other path is there? 

What can the Wisconsin Supreme Court do to restore the public's confidence that this court is really a court?

Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson sent out a memo offering some ideas about restoring decorum (and public confidence), including opening judicial conferences to the public:

The presumption should be that all conferences are open.

a. The open conference could be held in the hearing room.

b. The open conference could be held in the closed conference room and streamed to the public.

As I said when we discussed this earlier, I don't see how this could be fair to the parties or how it is consistent with the idea deciding cases according to the legal texts and precedents (rather than policy preferences and political orientation). You'd have judges looking more like legislators, which is exactly what they shouldn't do if they want to look judicial.

The Chief Justice also proposes:

An expert on small group dynamics could be retained at no expense to the taxpayers to work with each Justice for ways in which the Justice can work in a more constructive manner....

Who would choose this expert? Would this be a variation on the demand — made by Justice Bradley after the "chokehold" incident — that Justice Prosser submit to "anger management" therapy? Yes, now all the Justices would submit, but submit to whom? What biases and preferences would this outsider bring to the project? (Sorry, I just can't picture anybody being neutrally professional anymore.)

Another proposal of the Chief's:

An internal operating procedure or rule could be adopted that 4 Justices not be considered a quorum or a binding majority that can direct action by the Chief Justice or Court staff unless all Justices have been advised of the "meeting/conference" and all Justices have had the ability to participate in the "meeting/conference" and in the decision making. 

That would empower the 3-justice minority to control the 4-justice majority.  It's hard to picture this court in this state having that kind of trust. (I'm thinking of how hard it was for the 4 conservative justices to find and interact with the 3 liberal justices on the day of the "chokehold" incident and also the way the Democratic minority thwarted the operation of the state senate last winter by hiding out in Illinois. The "fleebagger" strategy was only feasible because of a supermajority quorum rule.)

The Chief Justice would also like a separate "tribunal (not composed of Justices)" to make the final call on whether a Justice should recuse himself in a case and a process of replacing recused Justices with "a judge be selected at random." Obviously, you can see the potential for wresting the majority out of the hands of the 4 conservatives the people of Wisconsin have elected to the court. Imagine the endless strategic fighting over recusals!

Sorry to be so cynical. I can't help it, and I don't have a better solution to restoring the prestige of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

IN THE COMMENTS: bagoh20 said:

All they can do to make it better is shut up and get to work, but there is huge toolbox of things they can do to make it worse....

Althouse, isn't your philosophy that just doing nothing is often the best course? I happen to agree, and it's part of my business philosophy too. 

Yes! Nothing! I recommend nothing. Think about "better than nothing" as being, in reality, a high standard.

"I just want regular jeans. You know, the kind that used to be the only kind.”

This is the anecdote that begins Barry Schwartz's book "The Paradox of Choice." He "spluttered" that after a Gap salesgirl asked him if he wanted "slim fit, easy fit, relaxed fit, baggy, or extra baggy... stonewashed, acid-washed, or distressed... button-fly or zipper-fly?" His anguish was supposed to exemplify a big problem we have these days.

By creating all these options, the store undoubtedly had done a favor for customers with varied tastes and body types. However, by vastly expanding the range of choices, they had also created a new problem that needed to be solved. Before these options were available, a buyer like myself had to settle for an imperfect fit, but at least purchasing jeans was a five-minute affair. Now it was a complex decision in which I was forced to invest time, energy, and no small amount of self-doubt, anxiety, and dread.

Buying jeans is a trivial matter, but it suggests a much larger theme we will pursue throughout this book, which is this: When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable. As the number of available choices increases, as it has in our consumer culture, the autonomy, control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful and But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.

Get a grip, Barry! I feel like Barry I-just-want-normal-jeans Schwartz was the guy who inspired one of my favorite songs:



That was linked to in the comments — by bagoh20 — over on the Obama and the Packers post:

When I think of Obama and sports I always am reminded of this video that Althouse showed quite a while back. I watch it ever now and then, and I don't know why.

Why you watch it... or why Obama and sports reminds you of it? You watch it because it's so infectious. And comforting. And infectiously comforting, like friendly jeans. It reminds you of Obama and sports, I think, because you've had this picture in your head for so long: "Obama Celebrates Win By Riding Bike." He was a winner, about to coast downhill, and the regrettable jeans were the first foreshadowing of a failed presidency. He was not, as we'd thought, the hero. He was the man in Randy Normal Jeans. And then there are the dance moves:



They were so cool at the time, but now? I'm seeing Randy.

Voir Google.

Voir dire — the juror selection process — is transformed by Google.

While interviews suggest that Internet vetting of jurors is catching on in courtrooms across the nation, lawyers are skittish about discussing the practice, in part because court rules on the subject are murky or nonexistent in most jurisdictions. Ten law firms and five jury consultants declined requests from Reuters Legal to observe them building juror profiles, many saying they weren't sure judges would approve. "Lawyers don't know the rules yet," said John Nadolenco, a partner at Mayer Brown in Los Angeles. "It's like the Wild West."

Is this wrong? An invasion of the juror's privacy? It's so easy to do that it seems to me that making a rule against it is unfair to honest lawyers. (Cue the typical jokes.) I'd say get used to it. This is the world we live in. The information that's out there is out there. Deal with it.

IN THE COMMENTS: bagoh20 says:

I hope it catches on. I'll never have to sit on a jury again. 

Pogo says:

Fake posts implicating jurors and cops and witnesses will escalate.

Paddy O says:

I used do tweet to amuse me, now I'm hoping it'll excuse me.

If twits do tweet, then raps aren't beat.

Algirdas Brazauskas — "He was an honest man, a charismatic leader and outstanding politician."

"The memory of the first president of independent Lithuania will remain in the hearts of the people."



IN THE COMMENTS: bagoh20 begins with some decent-enough generic snark:

No matter who the subject, I find it hard to consider "outstanding politician" to be anything but an insult. I'm a bigot about politicians.

But it is not right for this occasion. Irene brings the gravitas:

Brazauskas was no ordinary, career politician. He became a politician as a result of extraordinary times. He was a courageous man who inspired the citizens to stand up to an awesome power.

Lithuania was under the Soviet yoke between 1944 and 1991. A documentary, Red Terror on the Amber Coast exposes these times. There now is a museum in the capital, Vilnius, dedicated to preserving the history of the Soviet genocide.

Many members of my family fled Lithuania in June 1944. Those who did not get out were deported to reeducation camps in the Gulag.

Rush Limbaugh crashed a wedding... and it made him want to get married again.

"[Limbaugh] set the date to make much younger Kathryn 'Kate' Rogers his bride after slipping into a Washington, D.C., wedding when they were in town to take in a Redskins game, say insiders. 'Rush had so much fun at the event, he made up his mind it was time to set the date,' a source close to the right-wing firebrand told The ENQUIRER."

Ah, yes! I remember the show where he talked about that. Here — September 21, 2009 — "Rush Limbaugh, Wedding Crasher":

So the band kicks up and starts playing music and people start strolling by and looking with the most perplexed facial expressions, "Who? What the hell is he doing here? Why is the guy on the microphone at the band saying 'Rush Limbaugh is in the house'?" So the groom comes over and he has a big smile on his face, "Hi, I'm the groom."... Then the bride came over and she brought the official wedding photographer with her, and we are posing -- now, follow me on this -- we're posing for pictures, you know, being good because we've crashed the thing. I mean, we're wedding crashers... I just got an e-mail from the groom of the wedding I crashed on Saturday night.... "Rush, half the room was current and former Hillary staffers, half the room was conservatives with huge ties to the military and the Midwest.  It was great to have you crash our wedding!  I'm converting as many as I can."

Getting married because you really want a wedding? I thought only women... young women... thought like that.

IN THE COMMENTS: bagoh20 said: "Rush is a Groomzilla!"

"I love it when you talk dirty to us, Althouse."

The ultimate in link-whoring. And yes, I am ashamed. But not of my position on sex: It is less of an effort than watching a BBC TV drama.

Also: "I'm a virgin ... as relates to BBC dramas. I respect myself too much let some limey have his way with me."

"'Jesus's face' spotted on the toilet door in Ikea Glasgow."

Oh, yeah?

Well, I found Mary on that rock in Blue Mounds.

IN THE COMMENTS : bagoh20 said:

Heresy! Ikea? He was a carpenter, for his sake!